My husband, Bill, has ALS, commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS has loads of symptoms, and all of them could indicate some other disease or illness. Since there are no true tests to determine if someone has ALS, a person could go bankrupt getting the battery of blood tests, MRIs, EMGs and nerve-conducting tests, among others, This is the reason why a person diagnosed with ALS has a limited amount of time before it ends their life. For instance, Bill went months of physical therapy with little or no improvement before going back to his doctor. Tests which took a couple of months ruled out most the the "other" reasons for his symptoms. By then, the circumference, or measurement around his calf, read a whole inch smaller than the other calf.
This is due to the muscles not receiving the impulses from the brain that tell the foot to move it.
When we were putting together a piece of furniture, my husband needed help getting up from his kneeling position. That was the first time I realized how useless his foot had become. I literally had to bend his ankle and then press his foot against my thigh while kneeling behind him in order to let him pull himself up. ALS is a tricky little devil of a disease, though. Not everyone starts with "foot drop" like my husband's did. There are many more symptoms that would lead a person to suspect ALS, including:
- muscle twitching or cramping in arms, legs, fingers or toes
- tripping or stumbling; missing a stair on the way up
- weakness in the hands or ankles
- slurred speech or "nasally" voice
- difficulty swallowing; more frequent gagging or choking when eating
- difficulty holding head up or frequent slouching
- tiredness or fatigue from doing normal daily routine
For more information on symptoms of ALS, click on THIS LINK to the Mayo Clinic
Look at all those generic symptoms! Now you see how difficult it is to diagnose ALS. They all fit other illnesses, many of them curable.
And that's when we came crashing into the wall of reality.
(Photo credit: www.Dreamstime.com)
Incurable.
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