I don’t know the difference between Amyotorphic lateral sclerosis and Primary lateral sclerosis. Or do i? I was diagnosed by Dr. Richard Bernstein in 1977, after two days diligent examination of my MRI’s, as having PLS, and I have believed him ever since.

ALS is usually fatal within 2-3 years. Victims of PLS normally die in bed of old age. PLS patients are usually pain-free and suffer no dire consequences of the disease — except it is progressive and sometimes leaves one wheelchair-bound, unable to walk.


If your MRI shows your Upper motor neurons are disturbed, you may have PLS; if the MRI shows upper AND lower motor neurons to be disturbed, you are toast. Be glad you have only PLS to contend with.


Stephen Hawking, the PhD. genius from Great Britain, contracted the disease in his mid-twenties; he is now 75 (it seems one had best be British if one is about to acquire ALS).


There are roughly 500 people in the U.S., like me, who have PLS, and more than 10,000 who have ALS; it is common that medical insurance is hard to come by.


In any event, I now have PLS; it has, over the years, left me pretty helpless. I cannot, for example, get myself up and down from the 1st to 2nd floors (or visa-versa) without the electronic stair-chair, any more than I can I get up from a nocturnal rest nor make ready for one without thorough assistance.


I can, however, brush my own teeth (vigorously, if I do say so myself!)


But that’s where it stops. Were it not for my dutiful and devoted wife I would be helpless and hopeless from the git-go. She is indeed my ‘saviour’, my refuge, my keeper from all things evil. Lord, she even feeds me and keeps me ‘watered’ when I am dry!


What would I do and be without her? Just a shell, an ornament. What I was, before PLS gave me a definite purpose in living, in being alive?



Copyright©2015 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved, may not be published, nor re-written nor broadcast without author’s permission