Give me y'all your law impressionant day to day, day to day fluctuations. Well, so here we are. It's almost the end of 2024 and we have a very raw, very vulnerable episode today. Um, I, uh, oh, is there anything you want to say to start, Lou?
Well, uh, a few months ago we got some news, like big capital letter news, um, from Adele's mom. Um, it's changed our lives since then. It's very personal. But I think, relatable to a lot of people, um, we found out that Adele's mom has a terminal illness, a very rare one.
Um, one that we, I think almost all of us really know the name of it. It's called Lou Gehrig's disease. I know of it from when I was a kid, I was obsessed with baseball. And there's a very poignant speak or speak, a speech, poignant speech that Lou Gehrig made when he retired from baseball.
And it starts with today, I consider myself the luckiest man in the world. Because as they understood what was happening to him and the complexity of it, um, it made it news, you know, to the world at that time. And, uh, so also something that I registered as a young, young boy as a boy. Um, yeah.
Yeah. I, thank you Lou for that. And I'll, I'll back up a little bit. I, I've had a hard, hard year.
Um, I noticed something was wrong with my mom. Um, I would notice it in our phone calls home. And, uh, I noticed it in her speech. That was my first indication.
And we are, we are close. Um, we don't live close, but we are close. And we talked regularly, at least once a week. Uh, my folks are in Wisconsin as our regular listeners know.
And, um, it started out with me noticing my mom's speech was sounding slurred on the phone. And I began mentioning it to Lou saying, gosh, there's something different about my mom. I can't quite put my finger on it. Um, but it just was like this gnawing thing that I couldn't let go of.
I, I just, I had this knowing, you noticed a lot of things. You know, within our family, you were often the first to sound alarm. And often your alarm can be met with puzzled looks or shrugs. And it must be hard.
You know, we've been through this and other regards in our life. And, but you really, your mom came to visit us. My parents came out in May of this year to visit us for, uh, kind of a combination thing. My father's birthday and our wedding anniversary and just the timing.
Uh, it was just being a good time for them to come. And when my parents arrived, my mom had had had a very, very hard flight. And she said that that was the hardest flight she's ever been on in her whole life. And it was quite a dramatic statement.
She's been on a lot of planes. Um, she has known for drama, but that when I, again, this was like a year of when she would say things, no, look at her. I realized it was being said with the utmost sincerity. No drama attached.
It was when she said that was the hardest flight of my life. She meant it. You felt it. I just, I just looked at her and I, again, it hit me and I thought, okay, this is something I need to hear and I need to listen to this and know that this is real.
This isn't the drama. This isn't pretend. She's not exaggerating. And, uh, her speech was slurred and she was having a hard time with her walking.
And we had a very incredible heart to heart, my mom and I. And I told her that I noticed these changes and she seemed deeply relieved and felt seen. Um, and, but yeah, they hadn't really done anything about them yet because I think as you age and also it's scary. It's scary to acknowledge what could be happening to yourself, right?
It's just, it's really scary. And to look at yourself and go, there could be something really wrong. And cause then that means that everything changes. And so I made her promise that when she got back to Wisconsin, she would go see her doctor and insist that something had changed and she really needed to get seen seriously.
They needed to get to the bottom of it. And she said, Adele, I will do that. And she kept her promise. And, um, we weren't sure if it had been a stroke or what that was kind of what we were thinking at first.
Um, that's how my grandfather had died from her father. And so we just sort of thought, Oh, well, it was a stroke that maybe had happened and she didn't notice that can happen to people. And, um, but they quickly learned it was not a stroke. And she had been given a doctor's appointment then in October.
That's how long it takes. So, this is just something I've wanted to share, but I really haven't known how and it's been sitting on me for quite some time. But it's, it's not going away and it's a part of my life. And around Prussians is a part of my life.
And so before the year, this year ended, I, I just needed to get it off my chest. Um, you know how you can look at someone's social media or their life and you think you know their life. And it's just a reminder that there can be things happening in someone's life that you know nothing about. And it's just a place where we choose to share certain things.
And that's okay. But just keep in mind that there's almost always more to the story. And, uh, you know, uh, to say that it has rocked my world would be a tremendous understatement. And now I really understand the meaning of everything has changed.
Because everything has changed. And I will actually no longer be the same. And that's so hard. It's so, so hard.
Um, and it's so incredibly painful. Um, I hate it for her. I hate it for my dad. I hate it for myself and my brothers.
I hate it. I hate it all. And it's a mix of so many things. It's like anger.
It's, it's, um, frustration and fairness. You go through all of the things. You know, when my mom first told me, well, my dad is actually the one that told me, um, it's funny the things that came to my mind. I immediately felt jealous of everyone else's moms.
I know, I immediately just felt this profound jealousy of like, Oh, wow, my mom is dying and yours is still here. And my mom is still alive, but it's progressing. So that's why I've been traveling more. I've been mentioning it some in the episodes and I'm trying to be back in Wisconsin about every three weeks or so.
And to just be there and to be a part of her life as much as possible. If you don't know what ALS is, I can read a little bit of, um, just the, the definition. I, I didn't know myself. I really had never really thought about it before or it wasn't part of my world.
You know, I mean, when I found out about it as a kid, it was kind of like finding out about nuclear war. Wow. Like we are just, we feel it's this uncertainty that the worst case scenario exists because that disease, Lou Gehrig's disease, as I knew it for, for most of my life, sounded like the most terrifying thing. It's, it's not the diagnosis you want to get.
And that's not disputed as far as I could tell. Um, well, your mother now, as it is being watched and seen by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, she lives because of her proximity to the clinic. We got kind of lucky, I would say. I mean, although there is no luck involved, it's not, it cannot be treated.
Um, the Mayo Clinic who discovered Lou Gehrig's disease, they discovered it there. He went there. That's where it was named. They know nothing more about it than what they knew when he, well, I mean, I don't know if that's true.
I'm sure there's research being done all the time. There is certainly to, I mean, I don't want to soft pedal it. The truth is it's incredibly depressing. There is no cure.
And so yeah, it's not, you know, there's, there's not even drugs. There's not a treatment. There's not nothing that slows it. If it slows it, it's by like a month or two drugs that they say could potentially slow your death by two months, which is, I mean, when you're sitting there being told that it doesn't feel like much.
So in 1939, 1939, they did, they sort of named the disease. Yeah. And that was a very long time ago. I know.
And so, and in so many, with so many other diseases and ailments, yeah, there's been incredible progress. Yeah, thank God. I've, we know people who've been diagnosed with very grim sounding cancer, yes, have survived. I know for a while.
I know. If not still. And if not until they're natural due date, the expiration date for us all, which we all do have that. So, yeah.
But this is really unusually cruel. Yes. As ALS progresses, motor neurons degenerate and die, leading to muscle weakness, atrophy and loss of function, they eventually result in paralysis, respiratory failure and death. There's no cure for ALS.
My mom is incredibly fortunate to be seen by the Mayo Clinic. It's a fluke that this happened, but it happened. And she is now part of their system, their medical system and is being seen by their ALS clinic. And I got to go there, actually.
I got to go to Rochester, Minnesota and be with my parents and meet with these incredible doctors, people who are literally the top of their field. And it's so odd to be feeling this sort of awe and sense of wonder at these medical minds, while also feeling profoundly deflated in their presence because they're basically just telling you how you're dying. And that there's nothing they can really do. They're there to kind of tell you how to unlearn your life.
And because my mom was an incredibly busy, productive person, she was not, at all what you would call a lazy human being. She was very busy. She's an artist. She's so creative.
And her and my dad have been partners for over 50 years. They are best friends. They do everything together. And I'll say this, the more you move, the quicker you degenerate your body with ALS, the more you talk, the sooner you will lose your voice.
It's so strange. It's so opposite of what you think where you go, if I use this muscle, I'm building this muscle and I'm going to run further, or I'm going to, but yes. So the name means there's no nourishment for the muscles. Right.
It's true. And so it's been so hard to see my mom become this like small. She's becoming physically smaller and more fragile and sitting next to her in these appointments at the Mayo Clinic. I just, she felt just like this fragile little girl.
But she's not a little girl. She's a woman who's lived a life, a very full life, but I felt like I just wanted to protect her as if I was her mother. And this is just a time for me to do the best I can. I've kind of had to slow down my expectations for myself.
I've had to unlearn some of my own things during this time. And to just realize that I have to get up, I have to get through the day. I have to, on the one hand, feel fucking grateful for my movement and my body and the life and the air that I breathe and that I can't get on an airplane and go see my mom and sit with her and hold her hand and massage her arm. And then I can also feel the weight of sadness and the best way I've been able to describe it to lose.
It's like I got this news and it's almost like this little cloud just settled on my chest, the sad little cloud. And it's not a little. It's not so little. I thought your another metaphor you came up with today was that you suffered like a wound, like a deep, deep, damaging wound.
That's what it feels like. So that's what happened. You were just, your soul was injured when you are that news and then you have to go, but you're not the injured one. You know, you are, but you, we, you, we, we have to figure out how to be stronger.
I know. And you have to do it despite something which just lays you so low. Yeah. You know where you're just like, Oh God.
It's been so draining. I have felt so tired and I, this is my first year of my life going into a new year knowing that someone I love is dying. And I don't mean in the like, you know, we're all going to die. We're all going to the grave.
You know, we're all, this is not abstract. It is a diagnosis. It's happening. It's fatal.
And wow, it, I just have tears behind my eyes all the time ready to like spring out for the littlest moment. And I'm trying to honor that too and just feel it because that also feels like I owe that to my mom to feel the hurt as well as the gratitude. And you know, we were on the elevator at the Mayo Clinic going back up to my parents room. And this couple got on who were kind of drunk and they got on with their like cocktails and they were heading up to the bar on the fifth floor of the hotel and having a good time.
And they kind of like, you know, like overlapping in the elevator and we're all sitting there after having had a really hard day at the hospital and they stumbled out of the elevator. And it was just my dad and my mom and I left in there and my mom just said kind of sadly, well, I hope they feel grateful they can still walk out of the elevator. And I just thought, Oh, I'm going to like really, really live in all of this, all of this, like the pain and also just the acknowledgement that I can move it's so many things I want to hold. And I also had a really profound moment when we were at the hospital where I had what I think for the very first time of this experience where I was saying good night to my mom and she looked at me and I looked at her and when she said, I love you, it hit me in a way where I was like, I don't know if I've ever felt that love before.
It it really made me realize this she means she loves me when she's saying it. This was like her truth directly to my soul. There was no if answer butts, no uncertainty when she looked at me and said, I love you. It was true.
And when I looked back at her and said the same thing, it was true. There was no question. It was the purest expression I think I've ever done. There was no insecurity, nothing.
It was just, I love you. And I mean it. And we just had this like nodding at each other where I'll cherish that moment. I really do.
Well, we are, you know, we're going out to Wisconsin in a couple of days. I miss your mom. Yeah. And our continues, you know.
I guess I just wanted to get this off my chest in a way before 2024 ends and 2025 comes. I have I have a challenging year ahead. And I know this. I will be traveling a lot.
I just can't keep this in anymore. And so I'll be talking about it. I'll be talking about what I'm going through with my mom and my family when I can, when I want to. But it is a part of my life and it is really my life right now.
And I don't know what to say other than just my only new year's resolution is to just spend as much time with my mom as I can. That's a resolution we can actually follow through. Yeah, I think that might be my only resolution I ever keep. I know this is it.
Thank you all for listening and also being part of witness to my pain and our lives. Happy New Year.