Battling with motor neurone disease.

Abstract

My husband Geoffrey died a few weeks ago, and my children and I are just surfacing from the emotional trauma of watching our beloved husband and Dad go down with the relentless progress of the disease that caused his demise?amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (motor neurone disease). Roger Carus's article on this disease1 was found among Geoff's personal effects, and he had been working to organise a New Zealand register of those with the disorder. Clearly urgent research into the cause of the disease has been going on in many areas. After our marriage 25 years ago we had an interesting life in different lands?general practice in the United Kingdom and in Canada, where he had trained in the Air Force during the second world war, then to the Northern Territory of Australia Medical Services, to New Zealand as an anaesthetist, and, finally, as a casualty officer at the Southland Hospital, Invercargill, New Zealand. During most of this period I worked as a nurse, in my capacity as a camp follower, except when our sons, now 14 and 13 were too young for school.