All of the following information about ALS has been
a collaboration of many different sources from the Internet and books.
The reason I chose to develop this page was to inform all individuals interested
in finding out what the disease was, and for those who had heard of the
disease I wanted to provide an easy way of finding out the important details
about symptoms, treatments, and counseling
for patients and their family members. The inspiration of my page
is my Uncle Jose, who died five years ago from the disease in Mexico.
He had the disease for a few years and I unfortunately saw him at some
of his worst times during his illness. I wanted to become more informed
about the disease and at the same time give others the chance to learn
a little about the background.
DESCRIPTION
ALS, medically known as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis,
is in simplest terms the deterioration of the nerve cells that control
the skeletal muscles in the body. This neurological disease is fatal
and the cause is still unknown. Another common name for the disease
is Lou Gehrig's disease. It was named after the famous New York Yankees
baseball player who died of the disease in 1941. Jean-Martin Charcot,
a French neurologist, was the first to discover the disease in 1869.
The name Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis means no muscle nourishment to certain
nerves in the body, how they waste away, and cause hardening in the infected
region of the body. Although no cause or cure is known for ALS, there
are treatments that help prolong the individuals life.
SYMPTOMS
Some of the most common symptoms for ALS is the increase
in tripping or dropping things more often than usual, weakness of the arms and legs, slurred speech, muscle cramps, twitching, uncontrollable
periods of laughter and crying, difficulty breathing, and excessive saliva
or drooling. In the later stages of the disease, some characteristics
may be difficulty walking, dressing, bathing, and putting clothes on, swallowing,
chewing, and breathing. The muscles that are not really affected
by the disease are the eyes and bladder, along with the senses of sight,
taste, hearing, and smell. An individual's mind does not suffer any
changes, either with all consciousness or with alertness intact.
INCIDENCE
Most ALS cases are between the ages of 40-70, but it can
affect anyone between the ages of 20-90. ALS is not a rare disease
and in fact, at least two of 100,000 people are diagnosed with the disease
every year, which means around 13 new cases a day. Men have a higher
rate of getting the disease than women do, but anyone can get the disease.
Ethnically speaking, the Latino population has a low incidence rate, with
Mexicans being one of the lowest percentage. Guamanian and Japanese
populations have the highest incidence rates of people acquiring the disease.
DIAGNOSIS
ALS is diagnosed by performing a large amount of clinical
tests that may include blood testing, a biopsy of muscle and nerve
tissue, an urine test, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scans, and Electro
Myographs (EMGs). Most patients with ALS will go to one or more doctors
to get accurately diagnosed. Once diagnosed with the disease the
average time span of living is two to five years. There are three
different types of ALS: Sporadic, Familial, and Guamanian. Sporadic
is the most common and can affect anyone.
TREATMENT
Treatment for ALS may include physical therapy, speech
therapy, and moderate exercise. To ease muscle cramping, drugs, heat,
and hydrotherapy is used. To control saliva and drooling, drugs are
taken. There are two major common medications that relieve
some of the pain and help prolong the patients' life: riluzole,
approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and myotrophin, FDA approved.
These two medications are not the only ones out there; there are many other
medications that patients use to help relieve pain and suffering.
Death mostly occurs due to respiratory failure because the muscles in lungs
can no longer function.
CONCLUSION
Each ALS case is different and
each patient experiences his or her own kind of pain. Family members
usually are not well informed about the disease and that is why I have
tried to incorporate all the basic facts about ALS. There are many
other informative sites on the web that can provide in fuller detail the
effects of ALS.
The hardest thing is to have to watch a loved one go through the pain of ALS, but if one understands the disease then one can somehow make sense of it all, or at least try to make sense of it. There is no particular type of person that ALS affects because it can affect anyone at anytime. The hardest thing is the loss of communication between the patient and the family, therefore if we inform ourselves more about the effects of the disease then we can stay strong and always remember that they are not dying of the disease, they are living with it.
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This web page was developed by Sonya Mendoza to fulfill a requirement of the class CHI 21: Health Issues in the Chicano/Latino Community taught by Seline Szkupinski Quiroga in the Chicana & Chicano Studies Program at the University of California at Davis, Fall 1998. |