actually I’m gonna combust

Angels fall sometimes ep16

He fell down because of his ALS disease and his best friend rushed him to the hospital

My Little Brother Got Diagnosed With ALS

Please donate if you can, right now he's trying to get a wheelchair

👍👍

Good News From Israel

In the 25th Feb 24 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

IDF soldiers can fly for free on Israel’s National Airline.

Some “amazing but true” stories from Gaza.

Clinical trials show Israeli ALS therapy slows cognitive decline.

Three Israeli ag-tech innovations that could prevent world hunger.

Europe is investing in Israeli green technology.

Israel had international success at swimming, weightlifting and 4 more sports.

A 2000-year-old stone box was unearthed on Jerusalem’s Pilgrim Road.

Read More: Good News From Israel

In Israel, we're slowly seeing the country emerge from one of the darkest times since the Holocaust. Evacuees are returning to their homes in the South as the threat from terrorists in Gaza is being eliminated. The transformation from darkness to light is reflected in much of last week's news. The dark days of displaced Israeli families have been made a little brighter thanks to donations and kind hosts. A wounded Fauda TV star has been able to see the light of day after being discharged from hospital.  A Hamas terrorist emerging from a dark tunnel shaft with a bomb was seen just in time. And from the dark despair after seeing Hamas murder his wife, a brave, stateless Bedouin and his nine children can have a brighter future as permanent residents of Israel. The usual weekly Israeli medical breakthroughs give brighter prospects for ALS and PTSD sufferers, heart patients, and pregnant mothers in Brazil. The winter sun is shining on Israeli agricultural innovations with climate-resistant seeds, plant propagation breakthroughs, and sun-dried tomatoes on the vine. Meanwhile, Israeli technology is revolutionizing the taking of photos in poor light. Finally, Israel celebrated some shining sporting results; a 2,000-year-old unique stone box, found near the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem, is now seeing the light of day; and an Israeli fashion designer played the Israeli National anthem Hatikvah in New York, to accompany the showing of his Autumn collection, aptly entitled "Illumination of Hope".  Let's hope that the rest of the world also "sees the light". The photo (TY Sharon) is of an illuminated Jerusalem street during the Shaon Horef (Winter Noise) festival.

Sathya Dhara Kovac, 44, chose to die this week, even though she didn't want to go just yet.

The Winnipeg woman's death was facilitated by professionals through Manitoba's medical assistance in dying program.

Kovac lived with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a degenerative disease that took her mother, grandmother and uncle. Her condition was worsening, but she felt she had more life to live — just not enough home care support to do so.

"Ultimately it was not a genetic disease that took me out, it was a system," Kovac wrote in an obituary to loved ones.

"There is desperate need for change. That is the sickness that causes so much suffering. Vulnerable people need help to survive. I could have had more time if I had more help."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

On May 2, 1939, Lou Gehrig took himself out of the Yankees' lineup, ending his consecutive string of 2,130 games. He was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease that would take his life two years later.

Photo: Associated Press via MLB.com

Important signaling molecules called phospholipids are active throughout cells in small compartments called condensates, rather than functioning primarily in cell membranes as previously thought, according to a study from researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine. The finding helps open a new avenue of investigation in cell biology and may also be relevant to the study of neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and Alzheimer's disease. Condensates in cells, also called biomolecular condensates, behave like oil drops within water. They are made of proteins, and often RNA molecules, that have weakly conglomerated to form distinct globules in the cell. These globules form compartments with chemical properties that differ from those of the surrounding, watery interior of the cell.

Continue Reading.

Neurotoxic Relationship

Lab-grown neural network model bearing dysregulated TDP-43 protein – a feature of neurons in certain neurodegenerative diseases – reveals accumulated NPTX2 protein, that is confirmed in the brains of patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal lobar degeneration. NPTX2 could thus represent a novel therapeutic target

Read the published research article here

Image from work by Marian Hruska-Plochan and colleagues

Department of Quantitative Biomedicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in Nature, February 2024

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hi so a few days ago I came up with an Idea and I came here to share said idea >:3

And with Recent Developments (jack, celia waking up in the middle of the night and being unaware of herself, all the lying, etc) I am Very Intrigued where this is going

YESS!!! I’ve been associating Celia with Agnes from the beginning because of the Fire ghost thing.

The thing is, Agnes died because she needed to pass on the flame so they could retry the ritual. This then never happened to our knowledge- but what if the flame was actually passed on to Celia after being in contact with the fire ghost (who was hanging in her apartment)

Like there’s definitely SOMETHING there. And I am FOAMING AT THE MOUTH.

people who need assistance to use the bathroom are cool and normal and awesome and i mean this genuinely with no exceptions.

Angels Fall Sometimes ep15

Lou Gehrig Day will be held on June 2, the date in 1925 that Gehrig became the Yankees starting first baseman, and the date in 1941 that he passed away at the age of 37.

Got permission from @achilleanwizard to upload the gift art I made of his Sidestep for the Winter exchange!

I really enjoyed getting to draw this beautiful villain, thank you for letting me have my fun with this 🥰❤️

Talking to the Dead

     So recently my wife and I were walking our dog Kiwi through an area cemetery.  It is a nice part of this particular walk as it is quiet, peaceful and away from the traffic.  It also allows us to be beside each other so we can talk more easily.  City sidewalks are not conducive to my wife, my wheelchair and our dog Kiwi walking side by side.  This means any conversation must be had over the shoulder competing with the noise of passing traffic.  To be honest, that was hard at the best of times, and these aren’t the best of times.  Combine my mumbling with my dear wife’s denial of any hearing loss, our conversations could involve a lot of smiling and nodding with minimal comprehension.  The comment about my wife’s hearing loss, can we just keep that between us?  She’s a little sensitive about it.

     We were walking through the cemetery, chatting about different things enjoying the sunshine and fresh air when  Robin then turned to me and asked; “Where should I go to talk to you after?”  Meaning after I’m dead, it is one of the many things I love about Robin, we can talk about the hard things and it’s okay.  Deny it all we want, but we both know what’s coming so why not talk about it while we can.  If I do this last part of my life right, hopefully I will leave no unanswered questions and perhaps that will bring peace to those I am leaving behind.

     So where does one go to speak to those who have died?  Do we all do it?  This got me thinking about those times I spoke to those who had died.  I will clarify that these conversations can be held aloud, or as most of mine are, held totally in my head.  Although I may not be getting actual responses, sometimes in my heart I feel a connection to the person I am speaking with, I suspect because they still reside there in my heart.

     My Mom has been gone some 21 years and I speak to her from time to time.  Mostly I have been telling her about life  events and telling her that I am sorry that she is missing them.  I say that I wish she could have seen her granddaughter Elizabeth grow up into the amazing person she is.  I wish that she could have met my sweet Robin, I just know that they would have gotten along so well as they have so many things in common.  I tell her that the brave way she faced her cancer and left this earth inspires me daily as I walk a similar path.  My Dad has been gone ten years next month, I talk to him telling him that at the end of his life when I was making his healthcare decisions that I hope I got it right because it still haunts me.  I apologize to him that I wasn’t more patient with him and for feeling the need to correct his many tales.  My Dad was never one to let facts get in the way of a good story, I should have allowed him that.  I have lost some well loved friends along the way, I speak to them telling them how much I loved them and that I hope I was a good friend to them.  Sometimes I talk to them about how screwed up this world is getting, and I wonder what they would say about it.  I don’t hear their response but I take comfort as it feels like they are sitting there beside me.

     In Tom Hanks’ recent movie, A Man Called Otto, it shows Otto going to the cemetery with his lawn chair and thermos of coffee.  He sits there by his wife’s gravestone talking to Sonya like she is sitting there across the kitchen table, and not six feet under him.  It is poignantly heartwarming and devastatingly sad at the same time. In the movie An Unfinished Life, Robert Redford’s character Einar walks up the hill behind his house to his son’s grave almost daily where he sits on a bench and talks to his son updating him on mundane daily life.  Both characters seem to take comfort in the practice.  It makes me ponder what is more important, to speak or to be heard?

    Now I should confess that I have a love/hate relationship with cemeteries.  One part of me finds them to be of amazing historical significance.  Names of those long past, dates of their births and deaths, connecting them to a spouse or child.  Sometimes some snippet of information giving you a minute detail about a life lived.  There are the tombstones with lambs on them for the death of a loved child.  There are sections with row upon row of crosses for the Veterans who gave their lives In a foreign land at the whim of the politicians at the time.  Mostly cemeteries are peaceful, well maintained green space, with little to no traffic.  They have places to sit, sometimes under a tree, or perhaps just on a patch of grass.  Now I am a story teller who is always in search of a new story and it occurs to me that these places contain thousands of stories, most of them destined to remain untold forever, and I think that is sad.  

     One of my old running routes used to include the road that circled through a cemetery near my workplace, it added the extra distance to stretch my run on my lunch break to five kilometres.  It was a newer cemetery, not like the massive old ones that have thousands of graves, many over one hundred years old.  I would only occasionally see someone visiting a grave there, sometimes it was a fresh grave, more often than not it was an older person who I suspect was visiting their lost partner.  

     I don’t like the idea of being buried after I die.  The idea of burying my body in the ground to slowly rot and decay has no appeal to me. I have already arranged and paid for my cremation.  The whole dust to dust thing just makes sense to me. 

     So where should Robin go to talk with me after?  

     Well the best place would be to walk the trails I cut on our property up in Nipissing, but that is problematic because someone else owns that property now and I doubt he has maintained the trails that I built up over the four years of living there.  I did also hike the trails behind our property that cut through a hunt camp and then led to Crown Land, so that could work, although that’s a pretty long hike.

     She could go to the Lowville Bistro where we had our first date and subsequent wedding exactly one hundred and fifty months later.  Next to our property up north I would think that would be the next most significant spot.

     When I lived in Hamilton Robin and I would go with my dog Buddy to the Arboretum at the Royal Botanical Gardens where we would often hike the trails.  I had a yearly membership there but avoided it during the summer.  We would visit there often in the fall, winter and spring when less people were about.  There are a few places to sit, or lookouts we used to visit that would be a good place to sit and chat with me.

     Realistically I would tell her that any place, inside or outside, where she could sit in the quiet, and perhaps sip on a hot cup of tea would be a good place to talk to me.  I would encourage her to talk to me about what’s going on in her life, just like we did when we laid together in bed, wrapped in each others arms on our lazy mornings.  Those times when life was as perfect as life could be.

     Will I send messages back from the other side, and if so what would those messages look like?  

     I don’t know but I suspect the postal service and wifi won’t be up to par over there.  Some believe messages from the other side look like butterflies who might land on you, rainbows, birds (usually red cardinals), flowers, or finding coins, particularly dimes for some reason.  

     I have, or should say had a friend named Margot who also travelled on the ALS Highway with me for a bit.  She chose to exit this life on her birthday last December, but since then her Facebook page is still being updated. Did I mention she was a bit of a character?  Maybe she got the upgraded WiFi package on the other side.  The day after her death her Facebook page advised she had arrived safely at the Pearly Gates and that it was cocktail hour.  She advised us that she would still be around, “Just keep your eyes open for blue herons and ghosts with red lipstick”.  The Grand River is close to where I live, rest assured that when I see a Blue Heron I will smile and give a nod to Margot who is now flying free.

     Robin will know what my sign to her from the other side is, there is only really one thing it could be.  It will be the full moon, what we have always referred to as “our moon” because it was watching over us as we drove to our homes after our first date.  It was the moon we would point out to each other over our near fourteen years together, the moon we would stare at while wrapped in each others arms looking out our bedroom window on the farm.  It is the moon I will want her to gaze at, smiling as she remembers all the days we shared our moon together.  Most importantly I will be reminding her that there is always light in the darkness, and that is what I need her to always remember.

“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light”

Aristotle

The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth bids farewell to a sold-out house of Yankee fans, July 4, 1939.

Photo: Murray Becker for the AP via TimeGoggles

How to make Eddie’s birthday a happy one

Fans’ annual fund drive for Eddie Redmayne’s Jan. 6 birthday, is on! It’s your annual chance to support Eddie +a cause dear to him for more than a decade now, since his Oscar-winning portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.

Even if you can’t donate, please share our posts to help create awareness of this deserving organization + those affected by this devastating disease. The JustGiving link +QR code are in the graphic + below.