The author of this article is very descriptive on what everyone with ALS is going through and the difficulties of giving into this disease - and how there are so many people out there that are trying to help. They want to help you and how difficult it is to accept the help, but you don't have a choice, you have to accept the help.
Gary Crook | artist ALS Fund Information: I wanted to share a very well written article from an author who has ALS.
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What We Gain by Giving Up
Smolev, Richard
Like most people with a neurologic condition, I have fought like hell to preserve my independence. Whatever was on the table for discussion, I resisted: giving up my car keys; trading my cane for my walker or my walker for my power chair; and accepting the fact that I needed men and women from my hospice and home health service to bathe me, help me get in and out of bed, or dress me.
At each step of the way, I was told to give up the fight, to buy into the idea that the men and women entering my life were there both to protect my safety and to help me preserve what energy I had to allow me to pursue whatever interested me—which is still independence, but of a different kind. It took me two years after my diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) in October 2011 to realize that the medical professionals were correct and that I needed to tell my ego to stand in the corner while I adapted to the new normal of ALS. I'm grateful finally to have learned that being bull-headed is neither the best nor the only way to plow forward in the face of this disease....
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