Reality has hit home lately. A woman from the ALS support group we go to passed away this week. We'd only met her once, maybe twice, but it was still hard. Not from an attachment of any sort, but just as a smack in the face that this disease is more real than I've been letting myself believe. She had been diagnosed in 2006 I think with bulbar onset. She wasn't trach'd, and it is my guess that it is something she chose not to do and therefore died from respiratory failure. It made me look around the room there. Everyone else is bulbar onset as well. I think myself and one other person may be the only limb onset. There is one woman, Lucy, who makes me laugh endlessly. She has such a sense of humor about everything, but each time I see her, I understand her speech less and less.

Another sign of progression.

Another sign of time running out.