ROANOKE, VA – Mark Kay may have lost use of his hands and arms, but one thing he hasn’t lost is his sense of humor.
“Do you need a hand with that? Oh wait, I forgot mine are for decoration only,” Mark joked.
Mark has ALS, but you may know it as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“It can often last anywhere from three months to five years before the patient is dead,” he said.
But doctors are in awe of Mark. He first started showing symptoms about 12 years ago, and received his official diagnosis from a UVA clinic five years ago.
“Mine is not as an aggressive form of the disease, so I’m able to sit here and speak with you, because I haven’t lost my voice,” he said.
It started with weakness in his hands. Now, Mark can’t use his hands at all.
“I tell people when they say, ‘Well, how do you do this or how do you do that?’ and I just look at them and smile and say, ‘With the hands of others,’ he said.
One way Mark makes his way through life is with his best friend and service dog Reagan.
You can often find them taking walks around Roanoke — never without a smile.
“It can be challenging, but I think that’s part of life is meeting the challenges. You know, you can worry about a lot in life, or you can set it aside and chart your path,” he said.
Truth be told, Mark doesn’t know how much time he has left to live. There are a lot of unknowns about ALS. Treatment is limited, and there’s no cure.
“It’s all speculative, there’s nothing that truly works right now,” he said.
While it can be genetic, and testing can be done to catch that gene — that wasn’t Mark’s case. There’s no answer to why he has ALS. Or what else it will do to his body.
“I have to be the one in control of my attitude. If I look for the negativity every day, then I will find the negativity,” he said.
With the time he has left, Mark tells 10 News he will continue to advocate for people with disabilities.
“Sometimes you have to deal with what you have to deal with. And I can’t change that, so the only thing that I can change is each day I can clip my service dog in, go for a walk, and be visible in the community, be a visible face for ALS and ADA issues,” he said.