Tag Archives: guest post

Guest Post: A Letter from Kristen

This letter came to me last week, and I had to ask Kristen if I could post it. Read it and you’ll understand why.

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Confession: I feel super awkward writing to someone I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever done it, and I wish it didn’t have to be because of ALS, but here we go. ALS is making me do things I’ve never done before, and I’m not even the one who’s got it.

I’m Kristen, from Canada…living in England…with my German husband. At 40, he was diagnosed with ALS. Lower-limb onset. Slow progression. That was about a year and a half ago.

Most people can remember the exact day of diagnosis. I can’t. We had a 3-year-old and 6-month-old twins. I was so utterly sleep deprived that I can’t tell you anything about that day, other than I was convinced that my husband was absolutely fine, and didn’t even go to the doctor’s appointment with him. That’s how confident I felt that he was dealing with a quirky neurological situation, rather than a diagnosis with a “life expectancy” attached.

I hate that day, whenever it was. Read More>

|Categories: Diagnosis, Life, Parenting, Relationships | Tags: , | Permalink

Phasing Out—A Guest Post by Carrey

Many thanks to Carrey Robinson Dewey for providing today’s guest post. Carrey first shared this on Facebook, and I thought it was so honest and enlightening. This is life with ALS: abilities—moments, really—are taken from us. Family life changes in ways we didn’t foresee and do not welcome.

It isn’t easy, and it requires us to shift our thinking every day so that we don’t drown in the reality of the disease. So that we can keep taking care of the people we love, even if we sometimes feel that we’re doing it from the sidelines.

PHASING OUT

Our morning routines have been nuts-o here at the Dewey household the past few years. In the morning, I wake up first, craft my edible art we call lunches, get the basic breakfast supplies out, cut fruit, empty the dishwasher, greet hubby when he comes downstairs, fix his collar, hand him breakfast, kiss him goodbye—finish getting lunches, backpacks, folders ready, find shoes, fix bedhead, stick a hair bow in, and a final “don’t forget to brush your teeth,” kiss them and put them on the bus routine!

That was all before ALS. Read More>

|Categories: Life, Parenting, Progression, Relationships | Tags: , , , | Permalink