Join Me in Advancing ALS Awareness Beyond May
The sun is setting on another ALS Awareness Month. If we’ve been successful at drawing attention to the disease, we’ve reminded those who are untouched by its tortuous path that ALS is an…
Notes From the ALS Front
— Rick Jobus
Rick is a 62-year-old man who was diagnosed with ALS in January 2007. Currently a resident of Southwest Florida, he has lived in four other metropolitan areas, but greater Chicagoland will always be “home.” Rick is a degreed engineer, spending his career in the medical device industry. He’s had the good fortune of extensive travel throughout the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Caribbean. He writes, in part, to be an ALS advocate. Additionally, it is his hope that his output will help dispel the myth that technical folk and digestible prose aren’t mutually exclusive.
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In Memoriam: Rick Jobus, Feb. 6, 1958-June 19, 2022
Courtesy of Rick Jobus It is with deep sadness that we inform the ALS News Today community of the passing of our friend and treasured columnist, Rick Jobus, on June 19, 2022. Rick…
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How You Can Get Medicare to Cover Home Healthcare
“What one man can do, another can do.” So said actor Anthony Hopkins, playing the role of Charles Morse in the movie “The Edge.” He used that mantra as inspiration to fell…
Revisiting Medicare’s Coverage of Home Healthcare
About a year ago, I wrote about how ALS patients may receive home healthcare on an uninterrupted basis, with expenses covered by Medicare. Since then, there has been both good news and bad…
A Look at the ABCs of ALS During ALS Awareness Month
Awareness Breeds Compassion. Compassion Drives Enhanced Funding. Funding Generates Heightened Innovative Intervention Ideas. It all starts with awareness. May is ALS Awareness Month. It is not a coincidence that I chose…
Breaking Even with ALS
A zero-sum game is a situation in which the accumulation of gain is accompanied by a sum of loss of equal value. The net result is always zero. From the get-go, ALS seeks to…
Murphy’s Law and ALS: Plan for Things to Go Wrong and Pray that They Don’t
“If anything can go wrong, it will.” — Murphy’s Law That adage could be the ALS anthem. From the onset of mysterious symptoms to the serpentine-like diagnostic process and worst-case outcome,…
Perhaps the ‘Dark Ages’ Can Enlighten Us to Think ‘Why Not?’
*** Instant Karma’s gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head, You better get yourself together, Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead.
How a Friend’s Strength Taught Me to Cope With ALS
“It’s hard to make predictions … especially about the future.” –Yogi Berra Gamblers and non-gaming speculators fervently seek out “sure things.” In the absence of that, both groups attempt to identify situations…
The Mind’s Ability Knows No Bounds
“I think, therefore I am.” I have long been fascinated by that argument of philosopher Rene Descartes. Similarly, over a millennium earlier, St. Augustine wrote, “I make mistakes, therefore I am.” Both…
Rediscovering My Fountain of Youth
“Youth is wasted on the young.” That quote, often attributed to playwright George Bernard Shaw among others, may on the surface appear paradoxical. However, to me its meaning is clear.
My Pity Party Is Cancelled Indefinitely
“She put me through some changes, Lord, sort of like a Waring blender. Poor, poor, pitiful me. Poor, poor, pitiful me.” –Warren Zevon *** The other day while I…
When ALS Cuts In on the Dance
“If we’re treading on thin ice, then we might as well dance.” That is a line from a song, “Do It,” on Jesse Winchester’s second album, “Third Down, 110 to Go.”…
