My A.L.S. Story In Memoriam: Cassie D. Boyd 1937 - 2010 One afternoon in late November 2009 I came home to find my wife on her knees on the second of three steps from our garage into the house. A bag of groceries was on the floor. She did not tell me how long she had been there, only that she could not climb the last steps into the house. We attributed the problem to fatigue and age; we were in our mid-seventies. On the second Sunday in January 2010, Cassie was unable to get from the organ console in church to the choir room to warm up the choir. She collapsed into a chair in the room beside the sanctuary to rest. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a double major: BFA in Organ and BFA in Music Education. Until that day she had played difficult organ pieces in church using both her foot pedals and multiple manuals on the organ. She never played in church again. In late January she was diagnosed with A.L.S. after an orthopedic work-up showed no mechanical cause for her lower limb weakness. The diagnosis was confirmed at the A.L.S. Center in Charlotte North Carolina in mid-February. By Easter she was unable to support her weight and was confined to an electric wheel chair, and transferred from bed to chair to commode using a Hoyer hydraulic lift. The disease quickly progressed and in a few weeks she had difficulty holding her body upright while in the wheel chair. I used small pillows as wedges to try to keep her comfortable. She was unable to roll over in bed and would wake me several times a night asking me to roll her over to get comfortable. On June 18, 2010, our fiftieth wedding anniversary, she ran her wheel chair to the piano and was able to play only the melody line of "Anniversary Waltz" through to the end. Four days later on June 22 she was at last given rest. That morning her disease had progressed so far that I had to support her hand as she sipped her morning coffee. My employer CVS is conducting a campaign for the ALS Therapy Alliance during this month. If you shop at CVS and are asked OR are not asked to contribute, I ask you to consider this story and please give a dollar for a worthy cause. I have experienced first-hand the horrific debilitation of this awful disease and have shared this story in the hope that you will whole heartedly join the efforts of CVS and the ALS Therapy Alliance. Please, let's find a way to defeat this devastating nervous disorder. Dave Boyd Pharmacist Aka: Pharmasaurus RX Greenville, SC