Walking In My Shoes Living WITH FALS
- 𝓣𝓱𝓮 𝓡𝓮𝓼𝓲𝓵𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓽 𝓢𝓬𝓻𝓲𝓫𝓮 (𝒥𝓊𝒶𝓃 𝐸𝓈𝒸𝒶𝓁𝑒𝓇𝒶)
- Feb 17
- 2 min read
Blog Post 1: THE BEGINNING
Hi, my name is Juan Escalera, and I have been living with ALS since 2015.
Out of nowhere, I started to fall down. It was very odd because I had spent most of my life in a Karate school. I was also a Tower Tech, so falling down was a big no-no in my field of work. At the time, I didn’t give it too much thought. As time passed, I got worse and eventually took some time off from work. I was expecting the birth of my baby girl in January of 2016, and I also had a couple of surgeries lined up from a car accident I had.
The Hunt for Answers
With all the falling and new symptoms popping up, I started going to doctors for answers. In the middle of 2016, my primary doctor sent me to a rheumatologist. He gave me my first diagnosis of Myopathy. At the time, I had no idea what that was. After the doctor explained more and I did some research, I understood. I was relieved to receive a diagnosis because, maybe, just maybe, I could get some answers.
When we discussed the symptoms, I was experiencing, they lined up perfectly with what the doctor was telling me. Still, I felt uncomfortable about everything. I had so many questions. I explained to him that, in my 20s, both of my arms would go numb. Doctors could never figure out why that was happening. Now, I was about to begin a year-long process of investigative medical analysis. The best way to describe my year-long experience was like being a lab rat.
I had suffered from severe asthma for a large part of my life, so I was used to doctors and long visits to the hospital. But this experience was so much worse. With everything going on with my body and no one being able to explain why, the stress level was unbearable. I had gone through so much, yet still had no answers. How could it be that just a little over a year had passed since it all started, and I was still totally in the dark about my health?
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