reneeintx

From my understanding. It's a motor neuron disease, where the nerves and muscles are dying. Think of a bridge. On each end of this bridge are nerves. They talk back and forth to eachother..letting us move our arms, legs, fingers and toes..ect. Then think of a bomb destroying the bridge between these two nerves and the nerves fire to talk and no message is received, because the bridge is gone.

An AlS patient begins to feel profound weakness such as: falling, dropping a cup, slurring of speech and sometimes their muscles will start twitching, this is the nerves firing over and over to send the message but none are received. The twitching is usually felt after the weakness has set in. They will see atrophy(wasting of muscles..because muscles are dying) People end up in wheel chairs, and need feeding tubes, and vents to help them breathe, and are in danger of repiratory failure. They end up totally dependent on machines and others to live, but eventually the disease takes over.

People with ALS usually die within 2-5 years.
ALS has symptoms that mimic other diseases. Weakness is seen in many diseases(some not fatal)and twitching is seen in many diseases(also some not fatal).

Sometimes it takes up to a year to be diagnosed because doctors try to rule everything else out before a diagnosis is given, because it's a very rare disease, usually seen in males over 50. But lately it's being diagnosed in younger people. I don't know why though.

I've been reading about it over the past 5 months because I feared I had it, but I don't. It's a terrible disease.

Renee