The week after my Friday clinic visit in January a nurse showed at our house with a bi-pap machine a cough assist machine and a “vacumax” suction machine. All these devises replicate functions my loss of lung and throat muscle strength has diminished. There arrival was too weird for me. I sat there with furrowed brow, as Linda and the nurse decided best location placement and operations for each. I recall thinking; they don’t go with anything.

I was not ready for this step. For the next five months I did a fantastic job ignoring these machines. This revealed how good at this I can be. A fact my wife apparently was already aware of. I did have a distraction, which helped. Me my wife, daughters and ten other members from my side of the family decided to do two weeks in Italy in late June. Plans needed to be made.

As June approached Emory called to schedule the May clinic visit. This was the clinic where team members of each medical discipline banded together to get me to accept the wisdom of there recommendations. A moment of clarity from the clueless geniuses. It gave me pause.

By now I’d been silently trying to sort out my concerns with traveling. Eating had become difficult and my breathing challenges were affecting my sleep and mobility. With this I relented to the respiratory teams’ machines use directives and on June 13 we had a feeding tube installed.

All this was, to me, the first battle lost in a long war with ALS. They say the first loss is the hardest to take. Let’s hope that’s true. It sure took awhile for me to accept it.