The New Driveway

On Saturday, November 3rd, a couple Eagle Scouts, Perrin Concrete Co., and some old friends got together under the leadership of an Eagle Scout candidate and did some real good for Denny. Sue will be posting another article soon with more details, but in the meantime, here’s some photos from the day.

More coming soon…

Last weekend some helping hands came out to Denny’s and poured him a new concrete drive and improved the accessibility into his home so that he could around a bit better.  I’ll be posting photos from that soon.  In the meantime, I couldn’t have said this better myself, which was scrawled on Denny’s garage wall:

My weekend with Denny

I will go back to Friday, 2 weeks ago. Denny had gone in to pick up his braces for his legs. I was all worried on how he was going to take the news. I called him to see how he was doing and he said he was really happy because he would be able to walk better. As Denny explains this to me the messages from his brain to his legs are getting scrambled and this makes it hard for him to walk. The braces help with what they call foot drop. He is doing very well with them. Glad to see him walking around. He has been talking about going out for one more ride before he can’t ride anymore. Will keep you posted if this happens. We invited Diana and Denny over for the weekend; we made a small fire in the back yard and had a little cook out. We have to watch as he walks down the stairs as to not lose his balance, both his wrist are wrapped with an ace brace to help support his hands. Still able to use them, but with very limited mobility, he is able to write but with great difficulty. But this man is so full of life and just fits right in with his laughter and loving smile. Diana watching everything he does always worried about him as we all do. As much as my Denny does not like to hear it, this is hard on everyone. But I wish I had his strength I have always tried to be strong around him. But it is so hard to not want to just hold him and tell him over and over again how much he is loved so that he knows and never forgets this. By the comments that have come in I hope he sees that many people care and love him. And as I have said before and I will say it again, to know Denny is to love Denny!

My intro to the world of Denny Parsons

I met Denny years ago, a man so full of life and hopes and dreams. His pride is his family, his 3 daughters Jessica, Jackie and Megan. Denny would help out anyone who would ask. Always there to lend a hand. The one thing that would always make his day would be to make you smile. I remember going to the store with him and he would go up to perfect strangers and make them laugh and smile. He loves to see people full of life and smiling and not worrying about all the little problems of the world going on around them. Over the years I have grown very close to him, he is my best friend. We have shared laughs and the tears. When he started saying something was wrong, he had pains in his hand and was having some trouble using it he finally went to the doctors. They ran him through all kinds of test, nerve test, X-rays, blood work etc. I got the phone call with what they thought he had, ALS Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Which at the time I really did not know what it was. I immediately went to research and my heart just sunk to the floor. You see, ALS is “a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. Motor neurons reach from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord to the muscles throughout the body. The progressive degeneration of the motor neurons in ALS eventually lead to their death. When the motor neurons die, the ability of the brain to initiate and control muscle movement is lost. With voluntary muscle action progressively affected, patients in the later stages of the disease may become totally paralyzed.” They also say they have 3 -5 years from diagnosis. My Denny was diagnosed August 2006. Denny and his girlfriend Diana came over to our house after one of the many visits to the doctors. Denny looked into my eyes and told me he did not want to see me cry. Do you know how hard that is? But I did it for him. I will be writting about his life with all the good and the bad. I want the world to be aware of this disease as it is not as wildly known about as some of the others you hear about. We need people to be aware of this and for them to find a cure.

And so we begin…

I spent a good portion of the day yesterday meeting with Denny Parsons, an Akron native who suffers from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). The photos accompanying this article are from that meeting. In the coming weeks and months, this blog will be the home of a documentary project about his battle with ALS.

Yesterday, Denny, Sue, and I met to discuss how we were going to proceed, and to start getting some of his initial thoughts on what he has faced so far. I will be the photographer on this documentary project and Sue Hatos will be the author.

Denny is facing this battle the way I think most of us would hope to if we were in the same situation: with a smile on his face, and not giving up on the life he has. Even with this predicament, he continues to care more about helping those around him than worrying about himself. He stays strong and boisterous for those around him, even when he has every excuse imaginable to become self absorbed.

So I invite you to continue to follow this story as it develops. I will continue to take photos through till the end. Sue will be writing the accompanying book, and we expect articles on this blog from close friends and family of Denny’s.

Please feel free to comment on the articles here. This project isn’t just about Denny – it’s also about the human face of ALS and educating people about what this disease entails. The more people that spread this blog around, the more people will learn about ALS, and the more attention we can bring to it to encourage research for treatment.

Beginning the Story

In the days, weeks, and months to come, we will be documenting the courage of Denny Parsons as he battles with ALS. Stay tuned…