[img]2624|right|Diane||no_popup[/img]Speaking as the healthy half of a desperate couple with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, I was appalled by Mike Hiltzik’s anti-ALS essay in this morning’s Los Angeles Titanic.
We are returning to San Francisco early next week. We are praying, we are hoping against immeasurable odds to unlock a clinical secret that at least will slow the steady progression of Diane’s disease. Coldly, Mr. Hiltzik wonders why we are bothering.
Typical of undisciplined leftists, he was unable to pen a perfectly legitimate critique this morning without ripping open his shirt, flashing little-boy anger at readers.
Reviewing the donor-driven ice bucket challenges that have swept across broad swaths of our country in the past week, Mr. Hiltzik panned the wildfire idea for its gimmickry. Fine.
Gifted with the third nastiest case of distemper at the newspaper, behind Sandy (I Am a Victim of Racism) Banks and Robin (I Am a Double Victim, of Ageism and Sexism) Abcarian, Mr. Hiltzik behaved like a 5-year-old pursuing revenge against his unfair parents.
After stating his leadoff thesis, that pouring a bucket of ice over one’s head to draw attention to ALS’s impoverished research coffers, he flexed his healthy muscles.
Ignoring the fact that ALS is the only known significant disease without even a remote form of cure, Mr. Hiltzik’s senseless panacea is “Give up.”
Since only between 12,000 and 30,000 of 340 million Americans have been cursed with ALS, there is no need to donate to research because it will help to few people!
Since it commonly is fatal, he reasons, obscenely, don’t waste precious donations on ALS. Spend the money on diseases where victims can be cured.
Mr. Hiltzik never has had a family member touched by the disgusting ugliness of ALS.
The disease destroys a healthy body as if it were an invisible, other-worldly monster creating chaos among one’s joints.
Mr. Hiltzik never has sat on his ailing wife’s bed and cried with her as the walls of their well-planned future together inexorably crumble, one row at a time, one day at a time.
Mr. Hiltzik never has heard his declining wife say, “I feel weaker every morning.”
Mr. Hiltzik never has sat on a couch beside his ailing wife in a darkened living room on a depressing late afternoon, crying shared tears because her creeping infirmities cannot be halted. She asks you to massage her body that aches all over. It is as if the ravages of her disease are an unstoppable 10-feet giant sneaking around inside of her 5-foot-3 body.
Mr. Hiltzik believes Diane and I are wasting our time. I believe in miracles. I don’t.
