Columns

Growing up, I always associated the month of February with Valentine’s Day, a holiday filled with hearts and flowers. But now that I live with ALS, the holiday is nowhere near as important to me as Rare Disease Day on Feb. 28. ALS is among the many…

When baseball legend Lou Gehrig was diagnosed with ALS in 1939, unfortunately, not much about the disease was being discussed at the time. Instead, Gehrig’s career and baseball prowess dominated the news and public discourse. His larger-than-life persona was well deserved, but his illness was also larger than…

While my late husband, Jeff, was living with ALS, there was a place where we both felt supported and hopeful, his disease understood. Driving through the streets of Baltimore as we wound our way toward the Johns Hopkins ALS Clinic, I could’ve felt trepidation, as sometimes on clinic…

More than a dozen years ago, my friend Jana helped me process my grief after my husband, Todd, was diagnosed with ALS. She and I walked around our neighborhood, pushing our babies in strollers as our toddlers rode their bikes. Jana listened and didn’t offer platitudes. We now…

Even though I continue to practice daily voice skills to help me prepare for in-person conversations, I’m still challenged by the pronunciation of certain words. Often, I avoid the word altogether and use a simpler version. Or I simply plow ahead, slurring and bumbling my way and relying on lots…

In the Jan. 23 episode of “The Happiness Lab” podcast, Simone Stolzoff, author of the book “The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work,” argues that we should stop hunting for the perfect job. Stolzoff and podcast host Laurie Santos, a psychology professor, discuss how society’s view of work…

I’ve read dozens, if not more, of the kind of column I’m about to write: first-person narratives that offer advice to one’s younger self, full of lessons learned from difficult life experiences. Before my late husband, Jeff, was diagnosed with ALS, I devoured these columns, always looking for some…

Now that my husband, Todd, is paralyzed and uses a noninvasive ventilator, leaving the house is too hard on him. So when we have a date night, we watch a movie at home. Last weekend, we watched “Good Night Oppy,” a documentary about twin rovers that NASA…

I always love having a good “aha!” moment, especially when it helps improve how I manage my ALS symptoms. Better yet is when I learn that what I thought was a symptom of ALS was actually an impostor, the result of something called “learned nonuse.” Here’s what happened.

What are your plans for this year? What are they for next month? Will you do something you have always wanted to do? Will you do anything different from your usual way of life? After all, it is yet another new year and we want to have a happy…