I do not have ALS (Ameyotrophic lateral sclerosis); I am afflicted with PLS (Primary lateral sclerosis), no more like ALS than chicken-pox is like scarlet fever.


In fact, the likelihood of my PLS developing into ALS is as remote as childhood chicken-pox developing into scarlet fever. The former is diagnosed when the Upper Motor Neurons of the brain become disturbed; when the Upper AND Lower Motor Neurons of the same brain are disturbed, you are toast. You without a doubt have ALS.


So, I have PLS. And I’m glad.


There are 700 cases total in the U.S.; there are roughly 10,000 cases of ALS in this country — easy to understand why insurance benefits are so difficult to come by!


So what basically is the difference between ALS and PLS? Well, for one thing, PLS is rarely fatal nor particularly painful, though progressive—for example, I am wheelchair-bound; I can no longer walk nor stand without assistance.


I only know one person who has ALS (and he only by reputation, not personally); he is PhD. James Hawking, who contracted a disease in his mid-twenties. He is now in his 70’s — in a wheelchair, deformed, ugly, his gums and lower row of teeth visible, and is surrounded by all sorts of electronic devices to make him able to talk and be understood by his peers and appreciated.


(Undoubtedly, he has glanced at himself in the mirror mounted just above his head in the wheelchair and said, for all to hear, as he did each twenty-four hours, “Is this the day I die?”)


All I can say about James Hawking, PhD, that is he either does not have ALS, and never has had, or his symptoms simply outreach his grasp. I am inclined to believe the former.



That is too bad. The write-up about a ‘hopeful’ remedy for ALS was near the top in a candid article on “What’s New?” (There was no mention of PLS — I read the article twice!)


I had hoped to find an article about PLS or ALS — or anything even remotely to do with either that I could hang my hat on.



Copyright©2015 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved, may not be published, nor re-written nor broadcast without the author’s permission