May 12, 2006
Friday

I would like to add the following information for my article on ALS; thanks to an email I received. Please visit www.alsa.org for more information on ALS disease. Their website is awesome and very helpful. ALS is not contagious. Mental faculties are not affected. It is estimated that ALS is responsible for nearly 2 deaths per hundred thousand population annually. (I have had 2 members in my immediate family, not blood related, with Lou Gehrig's Disease). The incidence of ALS is 5 times higher than Huntington's Disease and equal to multiple sclerosis. ALS occurs throughout the world with no racial, ethnic or socioeconomic boundaries. ALS CAN STRIKE ANYONE. In most cases, mental faculties are not affected. (Please look at these facts on www.alsa.org/als/facts).

Many thanks to all emails that I have received; several have been letters of personal experience (many right here in Ketchikan), messages to carry back to Washington DC supporting the request for monies to be appropriated for more scientific research for ALS, what causes it, and finally a treatment and cure.

The care that my father is receiving here in Ketchikan is outstanding; the physicians and staff at KGH and New Horizons could not be any better anywhere else. Ketchikan is my father's home. Uprooting him and to take him "outside" is not he wishes nor does his family. The medical care that he is receiving could not be any better elsewhere and having his family and friends with him is far more important to him.

By the way, this week is National Nurses Week...thank you to all the nurses, everyone of you are so special; thank you for giving up your holidays etc. to care for us.

Thank you from Donna and Mel Teal, Linda (Teal) & Wally Kreider, Charlie and Teri (Kristovich) Teal, and Melody (Teal) & Thor Herrington and the grandchildren, great grandchildren of Mel Teal.

Linda (Teal) Kreider
Ketchikan, AK - USA




About: Ketchikan Resident/daughter of Mel Teal, who has ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease

 

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