Living With Als

I married at age 35. The man I finally found I could spend the rest of my life with was 51 when we married. We have been happily married for 6 years and I can say they have been the happiest years of my life.

After a couple of years of bliss the worst thing we could imagine happened. One night as we prepared for bed, he layed down and immediately jumped up and said, "I can't breath when I lay down". No matter what we tried, every time he layed flat his breathing would just stop! This was one of the most frightening nights of my life.

My husband is a smoker and drinker. He loves to socialize and entertain and both of us immediately assumed that this was probably his body's way of telling him he had abused himself for too many years and was now suffering from some sort of lung disease if not cancer at the worst.

After a long and sleepless night of trying to sleep sitting upright in a chair, we made and appointment to see our family doctor the next day. We thought for sure he would be able to tell us what the problem was and give him something that would help him lay down and be able to breath so he could sleep.

My husband owned a small consulting company and was forced to make a business trip the day after the doctor's appointment. When he was checking into the hotel the night before his business meetings started, he got a frantic call from the doctor's nurse. She said the doctor had the results of his tests and that the doctor wanted to see him right away. My husband basically went into a panick with this call. He explained to the nurse that he was out of town and that he could not return for several days and convinced her to let him talk to the doctor on the phone rather than wait several days and worry about this while trying to conduct business. The doctor explained to my husband that the xrays indicated his lungs were both about half collapsed and this was surely the reason he couldn't breath when he layed down. The dotor told him that he would need to see a respiratory specialist to find out why.

This was serious! When we tried to get an appointment with a respiratory specialist we were told it would be 2 weeks. For the next two weeks my husband would have to wait until he was totally exhausted and then hope to fall asleep sitting up in a chair.

When my husband's appointment day with the respiratory specialist finally came, we were of course very nervous. The doctor examined his xrays, gave him a test that measures a person's lung capacity, did a little poking and prodding and then announced that my husband was afflcted with ALS. He explained that ALS causes a loss of muscle control and and that in some severe cases the muscles affected could be partially if not completely paralyzed. The doctor told us that my husband's diaphram was paralyzed and his ability to breath at all was through the use of his chest muscles. His diagnosis was such that we were pretty convinced that he would most surely die from this condition since the diaphram is one of those muscles you can't really live without. His only recommendation was that we seek the advise of a neurologist for treatments of this disease.

We asked what could be done about a paralyzed diaphram. Couldn't he use a respirator or some type of device that would help him breath. The doctor explained to us that the diaphram moves your stomach out of the way so your lungs can expand when you breath. He further said that a respirator can put air into your lungs but can't necessarily move your stomach out of the way allowing the lungs to expand and fill. We asked him how he could be so sure since his examination seemed to be so simple and short. He further explained that one of the first indications of ALS is a loss of muscle control and he had noticed a tremor in my husband's hands and neck during his exam, true indicators of ALS muscle control loss.

Taking the respiratory specialist's advice we made an appointment to see a neurologist as quickly as possible. It was another several weeks of course before we were able to secure an appointment with one. All the while of course, hubby was still trying to get sleep while in a sitting position. He had also found that any type of physical activity caused him a serious shortness of breath so badly that just something as simple as walking from the car into the grocery store would mean he had to sit and catch his breath before continueing. At this point, both having no reason to think otherwise, we were bracing ourselves for the worst.

Finally the day of the appointment with the neurologist arrives. The doctor does a very in depth examination of my husband, asks about his tremors, tells him to walk a straght line, follow my finger etc. And then the bombshell! The doctor says, "no, you don't have ALS"

He explained that after examining my husbands prior medical records, which included several doctor visits over the years about his shaking hands, that the tremor was a common condition called an essential benign tremor. This made sense to my husband because he said he had the shakes since he was a teen and had just learned to live with it. This of course left us with the burning question, "why can't he breath?" To determine why his diaphram was paralyzed, the only part of the respiratory specialist's diagnosis that seemed credible, he suggested my husband undergo an encephlomiogardiogram.

My husband had this test done and he described it to me like this; he said the neurologist attached several dozen electrodes to his body and gave him a barrage of small yet very painful shocks that went over his entire body in a random order. This was apparently to check how well his nervous system carried signals to the various muscles of the body. The shocks themselves he described as sort of like holding on to a car's spark plug when it goes off, only this test was like having that spark plug touching all over his body when it went off and several hundred times in a few minutes. After this test was done is the only time in all the years I've know my husband where he cried from any sort of pain.

After the tesing was completed we were talking with the doctor waiting for the results of the test. My husband happened to mention that a few days before this problem began he had fallen through a deck that was under construction at a friends house. He told us that the deck was about 10 feet off the ground so in order to keep from falling on his head he grabbed both decking supports on either side of him as he fell to stop his fall.

At last! the doctor explained, this is the cause of your breathing problem. The sudden jerk to his body had caused the frenic nerves that feed signals to his diaphram to be strectched and possibly pinched. He explained that the test indicated the signals to the diaphram were getting through but that they were so weak his daphram was not responding to them normally.

Now to make this long story a bit shorter: 36 months later his diaphram is now working again, his lungs have thankfully re-inflated, and he is now working on losing some 30 plus pounds he gained from not being able to do anything but sit. The moral of this story should be pretty clear. Get a second opinion.

Probably the worst long term result of this was that my husband's business failed over the four years he couldn't work. We started a couple of web stores in hopes of replacing the lost income. We have been able to get the stores set up and online but don't yet have the expertise to figure out how to get people to find them among the millions of stores online. We are always open to suggestions, recommendations or assistance if anyone can help us figure out to make it work.

True Story.

Article Source: Main Articles

If your looking for sexy lingere, please visit my store

This article may be reproduced wholly or in part without written permission provided the byline, resource area, and any hyperlinks remain in order to give proper credit to the author.

Internet search engines and directory listings are imperative to your sites existence and success. Submit Your Website to the Searchen Networks directory and search engine to achieve authoritive inbound links.

Please Rate this Article

5 out of 54 out of 53 out of 52 out of 51 out of 5