Often Awesome Army

Surrounded by friends and family, Tim LaFollette passed away the morning of August 23rd, 2011. Please visit the Often Awesome website to view episodes from the Often Awesome series - www.oftenawesome.org.

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So Far..... In October 2008 Tim was in a bicycle accident involving himself and a car door. Shortly afterward, he noticed tingling in his right leg and its periodic loss of feeling.

By November he had been referred to an orthopedic surgeon who diagnosed him with drop foot (the inability to lift ones foot), this lead to a microdiscectomy (surgery to relieve disc compression and rupture) taking place in January.
Unfortunately, after all of this his leg seemed to worsen and his muscle loss was more noticeable than ever before.

Tim was then referred to a neurologist, who upon the conclusion of several tests brings us to the present. Following Tim's first visit to the Duke ALS Clinic, Tim has now been officially diagnosed with ALS, also know as Lou Gehrig's disease, a terminal degenerative motor-neuron disease that will eventually rob him of all voluntary movement. This same affliction took both his mother and grandmother in 1982.

Tim tested positive for the SOD1 strain of ALS, the most understood strain of the familial ALS gene.

**Tim has been admitted to a trial for SOD1 at Emory in Georgia and will be a part of a double blind study testing a new drug called Arimoclomol, which is geared specifically toward SOD1. He is also in the process of starting another clinical trial at MGH in Boston using an experiment gene therapy to "knockdown" the SOD1 protein in his body that has been linked to disease.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE remember this is not over yet, there is a lot of hope and now is the time for good vibes and love!

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