Tag Archives: als tdi

Tossing Corn

My friend Corey Reich has been living with ALS for nine years. Corey’s symptoms started when he was away at college, and he recently turned 30, a milestone he said he wasn’t expecting to meet.

I was introduced to Corey through our doctor, who told me that this was a family I should get to know. He was absolutely right. The funny thing is, neither Corey nor I ever go to an ALS clinic anymore (a topic for a future blog), but our families still get together every few months. Corey is an Oakland A’s fan, a tennis coach, and a lover of good food. He and his family are awesome, and they should get to be together for a long time. Read More>

|Categories: Age, Cure, Faces, Life, Relationships, Research | Tags: , , , , , , | Permalink

Staying Aware

Today is the last day of ALS Awareness Month. That doesn’t really matter to me, although I’ve appreciated all of the posts and efforts people have made during the month of May to raise awareness and share their realities of life with ALS.

Tomorrow is June. Am I going to stop raising awareness of ALS and move on to something else? Of course not. This is my thing. After all, what if we only celebrated hotdogs on July 23, which is National Hotdog Day? Would that be fair to hotdogs? The answer is no, it would not. And since we’re asking questions, is hotdog one word? Dictation seems to think so, and I’m too lazy to argue.

May was a good month. I celebrated my seventh Mother’s Day. I survived while Rob and Scarlett went to Arizona. Some of my best friends came to spend a weekend with me. Memorial Day weekend was full of peach picking and pool parties. Otto turned one, and his personality changed not at all. Read More>

|Categories: Cure, Doctors, Drugs, Life | Tags: , , , | Permalink

Curses

ALS TDI announced a new fundraising campaign this week, and I think it’s a great one. Swear2Care asks people to put their money where their foul mouth is by donating a dollar every time they utter a curse word. I’m a sucker for clever taglines, and so I really enjoyed this one: ‘Cuss ALS Research Matters. That’s good stuff.

As an Ambassador for ALS TDI, I joined a call last night to discuss the campaign, among other things. The F bombs were dropping like…well, like any kind of food I try to hold in my hands these days. By the end of the meeting, we all owed the campaign quite a bit of money. And that’s the point. As the Swear2Care website says, ALS triggers a lot of emotions. It’s hard to talk about it without getting heated up, so let’s use this to our advantage.

I love to swear. I think a well-placed F-word, for example, can be just as effective as the impressive sounding vocabulary words I learned in college English. It’s a helpful form of self-expression, and even the experts agree. TIME Magazine printed a story in May 2014 about how swearing can actually be good for you. Read More>

|Categories: Cure, Parenting, Research | Tags: , , , | Permalink