May is ALS Awareness Month and ALS United Rocky Mountain was honored to have Julia Humphrey share her story of family, strength, and gratitude.
My name is Julia Humphrey. I am 47 years old. I have a husband for 28 years, we have two children and two grandchildren. We have always been a close family. I always wanted to keep them all with me. I have always loved being a Mom and a MeMa.
I was diagnosed with ALS on September 6, 2023. It’s funny the dates that stick in your mind, that day was a normal day. I got up and was ready for work. I knew I had an appointment with the neurologist for tests later that day. My day was full of thoughts of, ” I hope they can figure out what’s wrong with me”.
My husband and my son came with me to my appointment. I had to go back by myself for the electrode test. When it was over the Dr. put his chair in front of me, sat down, and said the news wasn’t good.
Walking out to tell my waiting family was like tunnel vision. Telling them that I had ALS didn’t feel real. There were tears, there were these can’t be real moments, lots of these aren’t fair moments. After a few hours, my husband and children told me, “Don’t stress, we got you. Even if you do stress, we got you. If you need to break down, we got you. We got you through it all.” From that moment, my family has become my personal heroes.
They rallied around me. They asked me what things I wanted to do before it got difficult for me to do on my own. I wanted to go to the Arts and Science Museum in Denver, the zoo, take my granddaughters to the aquarium, and explore Fort Collins with my youngest before he leaves for college in the fall. They did it all, no questions asked. They have given me the support in so many ways I didn’t know I needed.
My family has been my inspiration through this. They’ve shown me what a family does when they love you, not just saying it but truly showing it. They are so giving, protective, loving….not enough positive adjectives for them and what they mean to me.
On this journey so far, I’ve learned that most people don’t know what ALS is, and human nature is to fear the unknown. I have figured out that sharing that I have ALS, the people who really love you will keep in contact and learn about what you’re going through, others just disappear. This puts into perspective what love actually is.
One thing that has helped me get through the days, besides the love of my family, is gratitude. In the past, I’ve been grateful for coffee, leaving work a few minutes early, and not having a long line at a drive-through. These were the “little things” that I appreciated. Today, my grateful list has changed. Since the loss of mobility in hands, arms, legs, and feet my grateful list is full of things like someone pulling a piece of hair out of my face, or someone shooing the cat away after noticing the cat is laying on my arms and I can’t move, having people who are more than happy to feed me, and you don’t know how absolutely grateful you are until you have someone who will scratch that deep itch in your ear!!
That being said, I am so grateful that I don’t have to go through this alone. I have family, friends, and the ALS community.