Dapper McDonald ALS Residence

10/14/2020

This has been a tough year to say the least. My heart goes out to everyone who lost their job or worse, went out of business, not to mention those who were infected and those who died. We are managing well enough at the ALS Residences but 7 months of being locked down has been brutal. Everyone here is healthy and virus free so I grin and bear it.

I have some good news. Within a month, we are opening 2 new houses of 10 people each, exclusively for people on ventilators. In an agreement with the state, we will be accepting people stuck in more acute care facilities and hospitals including people who were vented because of covid-19 and don't have 24/7 care at home. Of course, a number of pALS will be included and I expect they will become a majority over a number of years.

The state is helping to cover some of the care expenses but much less than they were spending at a hospital. More than that, the 2 new houses will get the full ALS Residence treatment including the full PEAC automation package and regular outings once the lockdown is lifted.

The Walk for Living is this Sunday. It is virtual, of course, which just makes it easier for you to participate. On Sunday, I invite you to Walk around your block for the cause. Whatever you can spare to send in financially will go to improve the quality of life to the greatest concentration of pALS living together anywhere on Earth. If it is easier to give a few dollars a month, that option is available. I hope to have more cheery news next year. Thank you for your support.

TO DONATE W/ PAYPAL:
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=YHNVKFPZ4CXUC

ps - Can you believe that today is the 14th anniversary of my ALS diagnosis? In another 14 years, I'll be full cyborg. ;)

Help support Chelsea Jewish Lifecare by donating or sharing with your friends.

12/15/2018

Yesterday, the Steve Saling ALS Residence and the Dapper McDonald ALS Residence at the Leonard Florence Center for Living hosted a group of Google researchers and engineers who have been collaborating with ALS TDI on their Precision Medicine Program (https://www.als.net/precision-medicine). In particular, they are working on improving the communication and computer input options with voice recognition. Before you think voice recognition would help very few pALS, consider that if a computer can translate Mandarin Chinese, then machine learning can make it possible to translate an ALS accent the same way a loved one learns to translate pALS long after everyone else hears gibberish. And because the machine is learning, your computer may maintain its accuracy as the speech deteriorates up to a point. This group of geniuses from Google hope they can improve communication and computer access for a great number of people. If you are interested in helping Google do their research, complete this short form expressing your interest bit.ly/AudioData. I did. Cheers.

Our goal with this project is to explore how Google products and services that use speech as an input method could work better for more users. If you’re interested in hearing more about a data collection effort organized by Google to improve the accuracy of automatic speech recognition methods for...

09/25/2017

The WALK for LIVING is Sunday and is the primary fundraiser for the ONLY Green House ALS Residence in the world. Thank you to everyone who has pitched in so far. If you have not made a donation this year, please consider chipping in $5 bucks. You WILL make a difference in the lives of real people living with ALS. Please use a few bucks to help me say with as loud a voice as possible, "F U ALS!"

www.walkforliving.org/steve
www.ALSRI.org

THANK YOU!
Steve