calherewecome

I am hereby breaking one important rule of mine. My good friend Doug (a DEC retiree) once told me, “Do one thing a day”. And when you get an urge to do a second thing, “Take a nap”. Words to live by indeed. But today, I am going to break that rule and write a second blog post.

So, I have been seeing a bunch of FB folks taking the “ALS Ice Bucket Challenge” whereby a person is challenged online either to pour a bucket of ice and water on themselves (videoed for proper evidence, of course. OR, send a check to ALS for $100.

So what exactly is ALS? ALS stands for Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It is also known as “Lou Gehrigs Disease”. For you millenials, gen-x’ers and other young folk, Lou Gehrig was a baseball player.

Here is the description on the ALS web site:

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually leads to their death. When the motor neurons  die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.

So my question for you all: All of you that have dumped a bucket of ice water on your head. Have you sent some money to ALSA? I am sure that the ice bucket challenge is helping to bring awareness to their organization. Perhaps, they might need some money, too?

By the way here is a pointer to an article in the Boston Herald on how the ice bucket challenge started.

Last but not least, here is a pointer to the donation page for ALS.

Now, time for that nap.

This entry was posted on August 11, 2014 at 4:21 pm and is filed under Internet, Research. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: ALS