July 22, 2026, by Kristin Neva
ALS has taken a lot, but I am thankful I still have my partner in parenting.
Our teenage son came home with an injury one morning last week, and I took one look at the gash on his face and thought it needed stitches. My husband, Todd, concurred.
Our son was well enough to drive himself to the emergency room, but he needed an adult with him. Since Todd is paralyzed, I hurried to get him out of bed using his overhead lift and set him up at his computer before meeting our son at the hospital.
Todd uses a Headmouse with a sip-and-puff clicker to operate his computer, and he pairs his mobile phone to the computer to communicate with me when I’m away from the house. That’s valuable technology that allows me to leave him for an hour or two to run to town, and if that fails, he can call me using an Echo Show device.
After I arrived at the ER waiting room, my son and I still had an hour-long wait before we were shown to an exam room, and then it was another half-hour before we actually saw the doctor. It was a busy morning for the one doctor who was working.
I kept Todd updated by text, but a couple of hours into our visit, he stopped replying. I tried calling, but he didn’t answer. I called my mom, who lives next door, and asked her to check on him.
Fortunately, she called me a few minutes later to explain that Todd was OK, and that the straw for his mouse clicker had just fallen off. He was watching a series of YouTube videos from a playlist, and he was waiting until those finished so he’d be able to give Alexa a command to call me. My mom put a new straw on his clicker, and Todd was able to weigh in on the medical decisions that needed to be made.
After three hours, we were still waiting on the doctor to put in stitches, but I was getting hungry, and I figured Todd was hungry too. My mom offered to come take my place, so I signed the necessary paperwork and headed home to make breakfast.
As I fed Todd his eggs and ate my omelet, I was struck with a sense of gratitude that, while neither of us has the quality of life we envisioned, ALS hasn’t taken away Todd’s ability to help parent. I appreciate having someone to turn to. If we are both thinking the same thing, then I am more confident that we are making the best decision.
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This article originally appeared July 2, 2026, in ALS News Today: A trip to the ER makes me thankful I still have my parenting partner.
