[BobbyB]

ALS chapter to honor 83-year-old woman

Barth Dorothy Barth is a highly unusual woman.

She has ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is two to five years.

Barth has lived with it for 25 years.

On Tuesday she will be honored at the holiday party of the ALS Association Keith Worthington Chapter, which serves Kansas and western Missouri.

Barth, 83, of Mission, isn’t being honored just for how long she has lived with ALS, but also for how she lives.

“She is such an inspiration to everyone,” said Nancy Lindquist, an ALS association patient care coordinator who has visited with Barth since 1999.

ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. Barth, diagnosed at age 58, is the longest-living individual with ALS ever served by the Keith Worthington Chapter.

She is among a small percentage of people in the world who have lived with ALS for more than 20 years, according to the association.

Barth was once a Hallmark artist. She left Hallmark after about 10 years to join her husband, Harry, in his photography business in Independence. He died in 2002. These days, after all those years with ALS, Barth’s good nature still shines.

“She is always up,” Lindquist said.

Lindquist likes to talk about an incident after a previous ALS holiday party. Barth slipped and fell into slush. Barth quickly went for the Magna Doodle board she uses to communicate and wrote: “How was that for a grand exit?”

There is no medical explanation for Barth’s longevity.

But she knows a few reasons, the care given to her by her two nieces, Marsha Bennett and Carolyn Gordon, and Lindquist. “I am so grateful,” Barth writes. “I couldn’t do it without Nancy, Marsha and Carolyn.

“Of course, I couldn’t do this without God.”



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The details
For more information about the ALS Association Keith Worthington Chapter, call 913-648-2062 or toll-free 800-878-2062, or go to www.alsa-midwest.org .

http://www.kansascity.com/649/story/385706.html