Melissa was 34 years old, healthy, active and navigating life with two young sons when she noticed something was off. At first, she chalked up the fatigue and difficulty lifting her baby to the demands of new motherhood.
“You just think you’re postpartum and tired,” she said. But the weakness didn’t go away—it worsened. In June 2023, just seven months after giving birth to her youngest, Melissa was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS.
Often called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the famous baseball player diagnosed with the condition, ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Over time, patients lose the ability to walk, talk, eat and eventually breathe. There is no known cure and treatments are limited. It’s a devastating diagnosis, especially for someone like Melissa, a young mother in the middle of a vibrant and busy life.
Melissa says, “It didn't feel like something I could accept. I'm not the norm, the demographic. I don't fit into the normal tick boxes of someone with ALS, so it was really hard for us to accept.”