Anyone know someone with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease)

A friends mom had it. Most painful thing I have seen a family go through.

 

My grandmother died of it. Awful way to go out, truly awful.

 

I know.

 

And I'm very confused after reading that.

As you can see from other people's reports on this thread (as well as my own second-hand experiences knowing people with ALS), none of Hawking's experiences match what other ALS patients have gone through. "Awful," "horrendous," "painful," "painful," "painful" is the common theme on this thread. What Hawking has is a motor neuron disease; ALS is also a motor neuron disease. But Hawking does not have the same thing Lou Gehrig had. Whatever he has has allowed him to stay alive for more than four decades after diagnosis.

If Hawking had ALS in 1963, he would not be alive. Period.

 

From the ALS Association Web site:

 

The overnight board op at The Ticket was diagnosed with the early stages of ALS about a year ago. He went public a couple of months ago and said he will work at the station as long as he remains mobile.

 

Sad to hear about all those other stories. Just talked to my dad again. Apparently the guy went in because he had a twitching in his shoulder that wouldn't stop and was keeping him from sleeping. That's when he got the lyme disease diagnosis. But he's been going downhill recently and even his co-workers were telling him to go get checked out again. They're not sure if he's going to go back to work or not. He could apparently get full disability if he does leave. I don't think I'd go back to work knowing how short the time would be.

 

Actually. MS is an autoimmune disease that attacks the nervous system. It is closer to Lupus and Chron's than it is to ALS.
And what Hawking has is a motor-neuron disease that is NOT ALS. Otherwise, he'd have been dead years ago.
(FWIW, Mitch makes this mistake in Tuesdays With Morry.)

 

I knew Tom Watson's caddie, Bruce Edwards, who died from the disease in 2004. It's no way to go.
Watson was at the Masters when he got the word. Did a PC later that day and in tears, said: "Damn this disease."

 

One of my son's HS teammates had a father who went through it from the kid's eighth=grade on.
Sucks doesn't even begin to describe it.

 

Oh, I know. MS is degenerative autoimmune. But not all sclerosis are "multiple" and autoimmune. ALS is a sclerosis that is motor neuron and so is primary lateral sclerosis.