Bringing Awareness To My Mom's ALS

Being a loving wife and a beautiful mother, she is everything to this family. She has been through the deep end with 6 foot surgeries and 1 back surgery, but even then she has never backed down in providing for this family. She worked 3 jobs before finding where she belonged at the job she works at now. She has been there for 8 years worth of choir concerts, 10 summers of closing ceremonies for my brother's diabetes camp, 13 years of donating plasma, every birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and has even stood with me, her daughter, though two very long concerts, (would have been 4 if Corona had not hit when it did or at all). She even walked the entirety of the Angelo State University campus with me on a tour in February with no problem.


But recently over these past few months she started complaining of a feeling of weakness in her legs, something that has never happened even with all she has been through. She went from being able to go to the store by herself to needing a cane and my arm as assistance. The freedoms she once had vanished into thin air as she now struggled to get up from the couch. Her words to me were, “it’s like what I’m telling my legs to do and what they are actually doing are two different things.” Having heard this and seen what she was struggling with on a daily basis, basic things like, getting up from a chair, putting on her makeup, or even just walking from the kitchen to the living room was taxing on her and she had to give it a minute and catch her breath or let her pulse rate go down. She finally had enough and went to see the doctor. Well that doctor visit turned into many doctors visits with no answers. They put her through every test they could to figure out what was wrong, X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, blood tests, stress tests, they even tested her heart and everything came back normal, the doctors couldn't find anything wrong. As a last resort they did a nerve test, the doctor told us that he was getting little to no nerve signal going to her brain. This is when he diagnosed her with ALS or better known as (Lou Gehrig's disease), which  is a progressive nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control. As this progresses it will stop her from being able to move and eventually she will no longer be able to breath on her own. There are medications that can help prolong the life of the individual with this disease but it is not a sure thing and there is no cure for ASL. 


Moving forward she will no longer be able to work which means that she will lose any form of insurance she had at her current job. So any hospital bills, doctor visits, medications, will all be paid for out of pocket. As many know medical expenses are not cheap and this will be a very extensive and expensive few months or few years. We made this GoFundMe page so that any medical bills and medical equipment she will need, we face we can face head on and not have to say no to something that could possibly save her life or make it better because we cannot afford it. I ask that if you can give anything please do, $5000 is just a starting point but with your help we can grow past that. The doctor has given her months but with this new treatment they have, if it works it will make her whole life easier and hopefully with this new treatment she will be able to make it to my graduation next May. 


Thank you to everyone that has donated or is willing to donate and I hope you have a blessed rest of your day and bless you all.