Considering the fragility of life, with or without ALS

In 2012, two years after my husband, Todd, was diagnosed with ALS, he and I made a trip to a larger town a couple hours away to pick out fixtures and appliances for our new accessible home. After purchasing the items and scheduling the delivery, we headed back to my parents’ home, where my mom was watching our two small children. Although Todd’s left arm was weak and his legs were weakening, he was still driving using his right arm. I was in the passenger seat.

As we were traveling a long stretch of rural highway, we almost got run off the road by a truck pulling a long trailer. The driver overtook us at the end of a passing zone and began to merge into our lane before her trailer had cleared our vehicle. Todd had to brake hard to avoid being sideswiped by her trailer.

I was furious. She could have killed us, leaving our children without either parent!

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Justice on the road?

Several miles down the road, we saw that she’d pulled over to the side of the road, and she and a man were reloading items that may have fallen out of the bed of the pickup truck.

We were both still fuming over our close call. Todd slowed down as we approached, and I yelled out the window, “That was really dangerous. You almost ran us off the road.”

She shouted, “You need to learn how to drive, ****,” calling me an expletive, and flipped me off. I returned the gesture. Not my best moment.

It was the first time I’d ever given someone the bird, and I’ve mostly refrained from it in the 13 years since that incident. Ever since Todd’s diagnosis, I’ve wondered if the times I’ve boiled over were because of the stress of ALS. This relentless, brutal disease may be a factor in setting me off more easily, but Todd reminded me that I’ve always had a high sense of justice. How different would I be if ALS hadn’t been a part of our world?

Todd is generally more laid-back, but even he was shaken by the reckless driving. He leaned over and yelled at the guy, “Your friend almost ran us off the road!”

The burly man responded with profanity and walked toward us. He asked Todd if he wanted to fight.

“Go, just go,” I told Todd, and he drove away.

Little did the guy know how easily he could have taken Todd down. Todd had wrestled in high school and practiced karate for well over a decade, and once in his 20s, he put those skills to use in the real world when he took down a pickpocket at the Taste of Minnesota in St. Paul. But he was no longer in any condition to brawl, even if that were in his nature.

Two years into the disease, he struggled to climb in and out of his truck. He had to reach across his body to close the driver-side door with his right arm, and he was unsteady on his feet. Later that summer he fell and bloodied his face, and he gave up driving entirely the following year when his right hand was too weak to safely grip the steering wheel.

I was struck by the fragility of life, not just in Todd’s terminal illness, but for all of us, at any time. We could’ve been killed by a reckless driver or have had a road rage incident escalate.

None of us is guaranteed tomorrow.

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