A Silent Vote for Grandma

A Silent Vote for Grandma

Her life was never one of privilege. She was born and raised on a farm where she met the man she would marry, share two children with, and follow from Korea to Germany for fifteen years. Harlan was an Army Sergeant, their children were Army brats, and she was the colonel who kept the family running like a platoon. Sadly, at the age of thirty-four, after merely fifteen years of marriage she earned another title, widow. A few years later she also earned a title she was less proud of, divorced. Some good did come from that marriage in the form of her third child. Her years of being the Army wife gave her the strength she would forever carry with her to raise her three children and help countless others along the way. She was selfless, loving, kind, forgiving, and as hard as nails when it came to her convictions and religion. All of these traits would be needed in the coming years as she fought for her life against a deadly disease.

For as long as I could remember she was helping others. She opened our home to elderly women who needed additional care that their families could not give them. She cooked for them, hand fed them, brushed their hair, cleaned their nails, and bathed them. She did whatever was necessary and she did it with the love of a mother. She gave the families of these women the peace of mind that no matter where they went or what they did, their mother, aunt, grandmother, sister or friend was being cared for by someone who loved them like they did. And she did, she loved those women with every fiber of her being. She didn’t take vacations, or even spend a lot of time with her son and his family in Nebraska. She allowed herself only Wednesday and Sunday night church service and that was only if she could get my mother to stay with the ladies. My grandmother did this for twenty-two years until six months before her death in January of 2000. Even when she could have been being cared for herself, she was caring for these women. As it would turn out, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, would be the defining moment in this woman’s life and ultimately everyone who knew her.

Even with the disease, better known as Lou Gehrig’s, my grandmother would prove to be selfless. When she was told she had the disease she was confident she could beat it. As we came to find out, there are two forms of ALS. About 75% of people experience limb onset ALS. In some of these cases, symptoms initially affect one of the legs, and patients experience awkwardness when walking or running or they notice that they are tripping or stumbling more often. Other limb onset patients first see the effects of the disease on a hand or arm as they experience difficulty with simple tasks requiring manual dexterity such as buttoning a shirt, writing, or turning a key in a lock. About 25% of cases are bulbar onset ALS. These patients first notice difficulty speaking clearly. Speech becomes garbled and slurred. Nasality and loss of volume are frequently the first symptoms. Difficulty swallowing, and loss of tongue mobility follow. Eventually total loss of speech and ability to protect the airway when swallowing are experienced.

As it turns out, she was diagnosed with the most rapidly progressive form of ALS, Bulbar. She researched and found that many scientists believed that they could cure ALS with a bit more research. This became my Grandma Kathy’s focus. She wanted to know anything and everything she could about this disease and prayed for the cure. She began talking a lot about something known as