Ranch & Coast Magazine

PORTRAIT: PHOTO BY EVAN STEFANKO WITT WOLFPACK: COURTESY PHOTO A Rare Battle A devastating diagnosis inspires a family's fight in the search for a cure A MYOTROPHIC LATERAL sclerosis. It's a mouthful. Most people know it by its acronym, ALS, or Lou Gehrig's Disease, for the New York Yankees slugger who succumbed to the then virtually unknown disease roughly two years after his 1939 diagnosis. It's what's known as an "orphan disease" due to its rarity, with only an estimated 5,000 Americans diagnosed annually. However small the numbers may sound, the devastation is no less catastrophic for each individual who is left to navigate life with this as-now incurable, degenerative nerve disease. Adding to an already cruel profile of gradual neural destruction that weakens muscles and ultimately leads to paralysis is who the disease affects. Studies show increased occurrence in some of the most healthy and thus seemingly least likely candidates for disease — elite and professional athletes and military. Todd Witt was blindsided by his diagnosis in the summer of 2021. e ever fit La Jollan found himself bizarrely struggling to lift luggage into overhead bins on a family flight to visit prospective colleges for his daughter. An unusually swift confirmation of ALS, which can often be difficult to pinpoint, came after visits with his regular doctor and, subsequently, a neurologist. "I had two weeks of full-on depression, like, 'What the hell's going on? What am I going to do?'" he admits, acknowledging that his will to live was deeply tested in those early days. "But then you start [thinking], 'Alright, let's just fight this thing and figure out what we've got to do,' and that's what we've been doing ever since. Everything's going to be ok. Someday, someone's going to beat it. Why not me? Why not now?" His initial path was not a smooth one. "I think the most frustrating thing for me [was that] if I had cancer, there'd Focus health BY DEANNA MURPHY Betsy and Todd Witt with Ann and Ed Witt at home in La Jolla @ranchandcoast ranchandcoast.com 38 MAY 2022 RANCH & COAST MAGAZINE

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