This speech was given last night to inspire the Firefighters for their Annual Boot Drive on February 1, 2012.

Thank you for allowing me to speak with you tonight. I am here to thank you for your support of the MDA Boot Drive campaign, and to share with you how important they are to someone like me.

I have ALS, otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. I am in a rare group – a woman under the age of 45. For me, that can be a lonely place to be sometimes. In this area, there is only one other woman my age with ALS. Although we “talk” now and again through email, we don’t connect face-to-face. She uses a ventilator and cannot speak. It can be daunting and scary at times to have a terminal illness like ALS and feel so isolated.

Those are the times when it would seem easiest to give up.

Just like, I imagine, how it must feel sometimes when you collect for the MDA. The weather does not always co-operate. Neither do the drivers as they dash by, preoccupied with their own lives. And many who do stop, no longer have the spare change they used to in this age of debit cards and on-line banking.

I imagine those can be the times when it would seem easiest to give up.

Or …at the end of the Drive, when the totals might not have met your goals and you feel that what was done was only “good enough”.

Maybe allow yourself to question “does it really matter”? It can be hard to imagine when the cost to bring a drug or treatment from the labs to me can run 1.8 billion dollars, if it matters’ whether you achieved your goals or came close enough?

With no immediate cause or cure for neuromuscular diseases like ALS or Muscular Dystrophy “What does it matter”?

That is a fair question.

I ask myself that every day.

I have this terminal illness, what does it matter if I stick around?

I know where this is all going – right?

Or do I? Do I really know? Of course not.

All I know for sure is as long as I am here, I can help.

And if I can help from this chair, then certainly so do you with your boots.

When you raise money, in any amount, you aren’t just helping to buy the expensive, durable goods, or medicines. You are buying someone like me the most precious gift of all – time.

The spare change you collect when spent locally, helps to pay for an MDA Clinic at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

There, I can meet with all kinds of specialists to help me with my treatment.

Neurologists, Physical Therapists, Rehabilitation Nurses, Speech and Mobility Professionals.

And people like Sally Kramer, who solves problems for me in so many ways.

The clinic centralizes all of these professionals into one location for me rather than me having to travel all over to see them.

That saves me time.

That also gives me time.

ALS is not a painful disease, but it is an exhausting one. So any energy I can conserve allows me to concentrate on the important things.

Time to spend with my family – and with you here tonight.

The funds from the Boot Drive buys me time.

An hour with a caregiver.

A few minutes with a specialist.

Or a shared moment with another ALS patient.

Your efforts are incredibly important.

Your Boot Drives creates awareness.

Remember that when you collect those dollars – and cents, you are literally buying me, and the thousands of others who suffer with a neuromuscular disease: time.

Something you can’t put a price on.

Thank you.