Walk To D’Feet ALS

The three of us went up to City Park in Denver yesterday to participate in the annual Walk To D’Feet ALS. It’s the fourth year that we have done the walk, of course the last couple of which have been without our motivation: Jeff Dunn (here is the link to a previous post about Jeff). It’s always an inspiring thing to be there with several thousand people with the same hopes and dreams that you have, but it is equally as difficult to know that everyone there understands that without that cure, the disease diagnosis is a sure-fire death sentence. 

As the race was about to begin, they reminded us of an interesting statistic: every 90 minutes someone in the US is diagnosed with ALS. Also, every 90 minutes someone in the US dies from ALS. Lou Gerhig’s Disease is about as efficient of a killer has it comes. It’s one of the struggles of the ALS community as they try to raise awareness…that the number of people with the disease effectively never increases. There really aren’t the long term ‘survivors,’ there isn’t a remission, there aren’t promising treatments, and there isn’t a growing population of people with it. It’s strange that the Walk was on the same weekend as the annual Race For The Cure – where Denver has the largest participation in the nation. The attention, scope, and hype is lightyears apart, but the need and deservedness is no different whatsoever. 

Jay, Karen, and David did the walk with us. A few other friends were there as well but we were unable to meet up with them. Cyrilla and Tanner had a wedding to attend this weekend in Kansas, but raised over $200.00 even though they weren’t going to be at the actual event. We saw people in all phases of the disease and in each of them we saw Jeff. It’s a tough reminder of his absence, but a good reminder of the work that is happening to try to prevent loses like that for other families. 

PS – Jay and Karen took some pictures, so when those get sent over I will post them.