Help Elaine Fight ALS

We will start with a simple statement: Elaine May, you are one of the best.

It has been a rough year already as we must help one of the pillars of our Norton Family and NCMC Pediatric Emergency Medicine Group fight ALS.

But Elaine is MORE THAN just this disease… she is a caregiver at the very heart of everything.  All her life she has wanted to help people. She originally went to college to become an attorney with aspirations of becoming a judge.  As a child she thought she could do better for people in need.

Life had other plans and she got married, had a child and put her education on hold. Eventually she would go back to finish her degree…but with a different focus, nursing, after being around the doctors and trainers at U of L.

Elaine graduated from U of L Nursing school in 1996.  Her career has taken her many places, including Jewish and ultimately Norton, where she has been since 1999. Throughout this time, Elaine not only cared for some of our youngest patients but also her parents. Her wonderful spirit cared for her mother at the end of her life following a massive stroke as well as her father until his death recently.

The path to Elaine’s diagnosis would start five months after her father passed. The VERY ACTIVE Elaine tore her right knee meniscus (probably climbing Mt Everest or competing in Wimbledon because she is that awesome).  A few months later she had surgery to repair the tear and almost immediately started having trouble with foot drop on the same side.  She saw a variety of doctors in various specialties over the following 18 months and despite this, her right leg continued to atrophy and grow weaker.  During Christmas 2020, she suffered another injury to the leg.  This seemed to speed up the atrophying of the leg and it now progressed up into her thigh.  Elaine was now requiring a brace on the leg to be able to walk (still beautiful and bustling around the ED as fast as she could though because again, there is no stopping Elaine).  During this time frame, she saw a large number of physicians, had multiple images and endured more testing but still with no answer.

Eventually Elaine met a physician that wanted to do a nerve release and sent her to St. Louis for a second opinion.  While in St. Louis she had her 4th EMG.  Ultimately this would lead to her diagnosis as the EMG showed motor neuron disease.  After traveling back to St. Louis to see a Neurologist, Elaine was diagnosed with ALS, which many also know as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

Elaine is currently selling her house as she can no longer care for it.  The future holds continuing muscle loss, leading to increased weakness, decreased movement, difficulty breathing and swallowing until death.  There are medications that may or may not slow the progression, but by only a of couple months.  There is no cure.  It is a devastating and debilitating disease, and it will require round the clock care. Please help us in supporting her the best way I know this community can.