Betsy McCormick’s ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) Fund

Our dear friend Betsy was diagnosed with ALS in January 2019. At the time, she was a healthy, very active 55 year old mother of three amazing, beautiful teenagers. She and her children had participated in the now famous Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS a few years back but she really knew nothing about the disease. Now she does.

ALS (aka Lou Gehrig's Disease), is an unrelenting disease that destroys the body's motor neurons and eventually leads to loss of the ability to walk, move, speak, eat and breathe.  ALS is currently not curable and is always fatal. The average life expectancy is 3 to 5 years. When Betsy was diagnosed, she asked her neurologist what she could do. He told her to start making her “bucket list”.

After recovering from the initial shock of the diagnosis, Betsy realized that the only thing on her bucket list was to live the best life she could every day for as many days as possible, appreciating every day but never giving up on the hope of tomorrow.

There is no cure for ALS today but there are viable treatments that offer promise to live longer and slow down or stop the progression of the disease. Unfortunately, all of these treatments are still in clinical trial.

Betsy is currently in the early stages of participation in a clinical trial for one of these ALS treatments, Nurown, a stem cell therapy that has shown promising outcomes, including reversing progression of the disease and restoring some motor function. Such outcomes are previously unheard of in FDA approved ALS treatments. Two hundred people are participating in the Nurown trial but only half of them will receive the treatment, the other half will receive a placebo. But even though Betsy has only a 50/50 chance of even receiving Nurown, she will travel to California 14 times over the next year and endure a number of painful medical treatments for that possibility, however small.  She has hope that Nurown and other treatments currently in trial will be successful in slowing down and stopping ALS in her lifetime. 

In the meantime, Betsy is living the best life she can every day, grateful for the overwhelming love and support from her family and friends like you, and never giving up hope for tomorrow. She has spent most of her professional life advocating for underdogs and what to others may have seemed like lost causes. Right now, ALS is the biggest dog of a case that she has ever taken on. She will use whatever paths she can to fight that fight for her family and all families living with ALS.

This GoFundMe page was developed in the hopes that you – friends, acquaintances, maybe even complete strangers – can help some of the mounting expenses Betsy and her family now face as a result of her diagnosis. Your generosity is greatly appreciated!