Life was so much simpler when we were kids. We didn’t have to worry about bills, or how what we say could accidentally offend someone else. Heck, even the stories that we read, or were read to us, all had a clearly identifiable lesson or moral to learn.
That’s not the case anymore. We see the news and hear reports of terrible things happening to good people and good things happening to terrible people on a daily basis. Heather Gales is an example of the former.
In little more than a year, Guillain-Barre syndrome took her life.
Heather, a mother of three small children, married a dear childhood friend, Dagan, who had three small children of his own over the summer of 2012. The family of eight was making it by on a single income for nearly half a year before Heather started experiencing numbness in her feet in November 2012. Soon, the numbness spread to her legs. She sought answers and a diagnosis in the hospitals around her Michigan home.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with a rare condition—Guillain-Barre syndrome.
This neurological condition consists of the immune system attacking the body’s nervous system. This frequently causes pain, numbness, and disabled motor function.
Heather’s case was particularly aggressive as it completely disabled her legs and caused breathing problems. She spent all of 2013 in the hospital hooked up to machines that helped maintain basic life functions.
The financial burden wore heavily on Dagan, but he rarely left her bedside. The children stayed with their other parents for much of this time. Heather lost the ability to speak pretty early in the progression of the condition.
Sadly, Heather passed away in December 2013, after more than a year of struggling every day.
Read a news report from just months after she was first diagnosed by clicking here.
