About Angela
About Angela
Angela is an amazing person. Intelligent, opinionated, fiercely independent, and always the life of the party. She is a new mom to Patrick, born November 2017, and she and her husband Scott had just moved to West Virginia to pursue an excellent opportunity as the assistant city manager of Morgantown, WV. She enjoyed her new responsibilities and coworkers, and threw herself into her work.
Angela's Diagnosis
Angela first noticed weakness in her hands when only a few months pregnant with Patrick. Her diagnosis went from pregnancy-related fatigue to carpal tunnel syndrome during her pregnancy. After a difficult birth, her diagnosis was changed to polymyositis in December 2017, and finally, ALS (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) on March 2, 2018.
ALS is a motor neuron disease for which there is no cure. Symptoms progress from weakness to paralysis and affect the entire body. Eventually, ALS makes it difficult to swallow and breathe, all the while leaving the brain intact so that sufferers from ALS are completely aware of their body's loss of function and the impact on loved ones who feel completely helpless to stop this terrible disease.
Ways you can help
Although there is no cure, there are some treatments in development or in various phases of the clinical trial cycle that have the potential to slow the progression of the disease. Much of this cutting edge medical work was funded, in-part, by the Ice Bucket Challenge. Stem Cell and gene editing therapy brings hope to the thousands of people diagnosed every year.
To learn more about ALS and it's devastating impact on the patient and families, visit ALSA.org, and/or watch this mini-documentary from VICE.com.
We've started a gofundme page for Angela, so if you'd like to donate to Angela's treatment or Patrick's education fun, please go to https://www.gofundme.com/AngelaClineALS
