Lynne's ALS Fund

I am starting this Go Fund Me page for my wife, Katherine Lynne Brown, who suffers from ALS.


Lynne was born in Michigan and grew up in the suburbs outside Detroit. She started her dental career as a dental assistant at the age of 16. She enjoyed dentistry so much she decided to become a dental hygienist, graduating from the University of Michigan in 1962. Wanting to get away from the cold Michigan winters, she moved to California where she worked full time as a dental hygienist until her retirement in August 2014 at the age of 74!  During her 52 years of practice she not only worked to provide outstanding oral hygiene care to her patients, she also volunteered at the elementary school level, teaching children how to properly care for their teeth. Multiple times she was asked to teach at the university level, but she loved her patients too much to leave her practice.  


Three days after retiring, Lynne underwent a left knee replacement due to osteoarthritis and foot drop. Surgery helped rid her knee pain, but for some mysterious reason it didn’t help the foot drop. Despite this, Lynne was very much looking forward to spending her retirement years with her family, finally getting to do all the things she had put on hold in order to achieve financial security after retirement.


Several months after getting her knee replaced, Lynne fell as she was walking across the kitchen to make dinner, shattering her new knee replacement. Worsening foot drop caused her to fall, and she underwent several major surgeries to fix the bones in her leg. Over the next few months the bones healed, but instead of getting stronger the opposite was happening, she was getting weaker. After multiple appointments to try and determine the cause of her weakness, her doctor finally sent her to a neurologist, where she received the devastating diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). ALS robs its victims of their physical abilities, from their muscular activity to their nervous system. Patients slowly lose their ability to walk, talk, eat, and eventually breathe. All the while the mind remains intact. It is a brutal, soul-crushing disease. Lynne’s neurologist gave her three to five years to live.


Five months after her ALS diagnosis, our daughter came downstairs one morning and found her mother unconscious on the couch.  911 was called, and Lynne was taken to the nearest emergency room.  Because Lynne wasn’t breathing well enough to provide her body with the oxygen it needed, the ER doctor put a breathing tube in and put her on a ventilator.  Further testing revealed that Lynne had developed pneumonia, likely due to ALS weakening her ability to swallow.  Because she was still walking, talking, and eating prior to going into respiratory failure, it was believed by the medical doctors that she would breath on her own again after the pneumonia was treated with antibiotics.  Less than a day after being placed on the ventilator, we walked into ICU and found Lynne sitting in a chair reading the newspaper, like being on life support was a walk in the park!  However, when it came time to try and take the breathing tube out, Lynne's lungs just weren't strong enough.  This put us in a terrible position: take the breathing tube out and let her suffocate, all the while knowing what was happening, or put a tracheostomy in and take her home on life support.  Needless to say, we did whatever we had to do in order to give her the best life possible.  Six weeks after going into respiratory failure, Lynne came home from the hospital on life support.  


What no one could prepare us for was how intense it was to bring someone home on life support.  Lynne needs constant care, which requires that someone be in the same room with her 24/7.  Her ability to breath depends on someone being there to suction her several times an hour, give her breathing treatments via the ventilator, change the trach cannula, change the tubing of the ventilator, and monitor her oxygen requirements.  Then there is her daily tube feeds; because she can’t eat  on the ventilator, she is fed through a tube in her stomach.  Any medications she needs are crushed and pushed through the tube.  She needs to be turned and positioned every hour, and someone has to bathe and clean her.  Our family only consists of myself, Lynne, and my daughter, so we have had to interview and vet caretakers, who are in the house constantly and of course must be paid, which is not covered by insurance. In fact, insurance covers very little of Lynne’s medical supplies and associated costs because Lynne was the first patient to go home on life support from Kaiser in FIFTEEN years!   


No one likes asking for money, but at this point we have drained nearly everything we worked so hard to save for our retirement.  We are trying not to sell our house and move Lynne in her fragile condition, so your tax deductible contribution to her medical fund would be greatly appreciated.  Any money not used for Lynne’s care will be donated to the ALS Association to help other ALS families battling this horrible disease. 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

~Vic, Lynne, and Kailee

PS:  We would be very appreciative if you would take a moment to pass our site on to your contacts.

https://www.gofundme.com/LynnesALSfund