Hello! My name is Tim Ritter and in March 2015 I was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Eventually, people with ALS lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movement, which often leads to total paralysis and death within 2 - 5 years of diagnosis. For unknown reasons, veterans are twice as likely to develop ALS as the general population. There is no cure and currently only a few drugs approved by the FDA that modestly extend survival by a few months. So far, the disease has been progressing slowly in my case but still….it progresses each and every day and I find myself on a ventilator approximately 22 hours per day and require assistance with all my activities of daily living. It is hard to believe that Marie and I have been living with this illness for over nine years, but with friends like you it is hard not to continue to fight the fight. We hope you will join us at our walk this year and continue our search for a way to defeat this illness.

Many people are not familiar with ALS so here are some statistics associated with this disease.

•    Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that is 100% fatal
•    There are zero effective treatments for ALS
•    ALS affects the transmission of signals from the brain to the muscles. This leads to the atrophy of all the voluntary muscles in the body. Eventually, ALS patients lose the ability to swallow, move, and breathe.
•    Military veterans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ALS than those who did not serve.
•    ALS usually strikes people between the ages of 40 and 70
•    Approximately 30,000 Americans are living with ALS at any given time
•    Approximately 5,600 people are diagnosed per year
•    2-5 years is the average life expectancy after diagnoses
•    Every 90 minutes, someone is diagnosed with and someone passes away from ALS
•    Only a few drugs are currently approved by the FDA. These drugs typically extend the lifespan of some ALS patients by months.
•    ALS is difficult to diagnosed and is often done so by ruling out other diseases, which may take months or years.
•    The estimated out-of-pocket cost for caring for a person with ALS is $250,000
•    10% of ALS cases are familial (inherited through mutated gene)
•    90% of ALS cases are sporadic (occur without family history)