My husband Artie has ALS and we really need your help.
In the summer of 2024, we were a happy family of four vacationing on the Connecticut shore. My husband Artie Reich - age 71, was walking six miles a day, eating out with friends, attending Mets games, and tons of concerts. A true music lover, he went to my son's gigs in all kinds of venues, beloved by all in his world as the golden example of a father figure wherever he went.
It has been barely a year since our simple but beautiful life completely blew up.
In November of 2024, my husband was diagnosed with ALS/Lou Gehrig's Disease – a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord. In May 2025, after a month-long ICU hospitalization and one month of rehabilitation, Artie came home. He can’t walk and is mostly bedridden, requiring a Hoyer lift to get him out of bed into a reclining chair. He has a tracheostomy, is on an assistive ventilator 24/7, and needs a cough and suction machine to breathe properly. He can’t eat or drink and is on a liquid supplement that goes directly into an opening in his stomach. He can’t speak and therefore communicates through a computer-assisted device.
Because the nature of his illness requires skilled and consistent care, we have ALS workers around the clock at an average cost of $30-35 per hour. They are amazing. The problem is that Medicare does not pay anything for this huge (and necessary) health care expense. If you do the math, we are heading towards an out-of-pocket cost upward of $250,000 per year. This does not include stair/wheelchair lifts and other necessary and expensive modifications to the house that Medicare does not reimburse and categorizes as “home improvements.”
This terrible, incurable disease that literally came out of nowhere is crushing us physically, emotionally, and financially and we really need some help.
To know Artie is to love him. He is a remarkable person and is handling his ALS in a way that is nothing short of heroic. Please help us get him the level of care that he needs and deserves. Any donation is greatly appreciated.
Barbara Kaplan Reich