May is ALS Awareness Month, and a Chicago couple is tackling the devastating disease head-on.<\/p>\n
Falling in love and getting married was easy for Cecil Puvathingal and Grace Christian<\/p>\n
“I like to say that I knocked it out of the park on August 3rd of 2018. That’s the night that I met this beautiful young lady,” Puvathingal said.<\/p>\n
“Within the first five minutes we met, I told him, ‘Listen, I don’t want to date for an infinite amount of time,'” Christian said. “‘If you want the same thing, we can move forward. If not, I can go home right now,’ and he said, ‘You know, the food’s really good here,’ and next thing you know, it’s history.”<\/p>\n
Building their family was not as easy as that first date, but after five rounds of IVF, Puvathingal, who works in the tech industry, and Christian, a nurse, finally got the news they’d been waiting for. <\/p>\n
“We found out I was pregnant in March of last year,” she said. “We were so happy, and then all of a sudden, he kept saying, ‘Oh, I’m not feeling well. Something’s going on.'”<\/p>\n
Puvathingal started feeling numbness and tingling sensations. <\/p>\n
“I could see him trying to open the window and struggling,” Christian said.<\/p>\n
Puvathingal was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, on July 9, 2025. Christian was four months pregnant, and their joy quickly turned into dread.<\/p>\n
“It was like someone just punched the heck out of everything that we had planned,” she said. “As a nurse, it’s a curse. It’s a curse, because I know where this is going to end, and, as mean as it sounds, I hope the Lord has mercy; either he gives a miracle, or he takes him before.”<\/p>\n
ALS is a fatal neuro-muscular disease. It affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control the ability to move, walk, and talk.<\/p>\n
People with ALS eventually lose voluntary movement, the ability to chew and swallow, and even the ability to breathe on their own. There is no cure.<\/p>\n
ALS patients also lose the ability to do simple tasks that we all take for granted. Puvathingal’s caregiver has to help him with those every day.<\/p>\n
Puvathingal and Christian’s baby, Lizzy, is just six months old, and Christian feels like she’s being torn in every direction.<\/p>\n
“I play chess with my husband’s life. I try to stay ahead of everything,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not doing a good enough job for either of them, I’m not giving 100 percent.”<\/p>\n
But Puvathingal calls his wife “Amazing Grace,” his saving grace. He believes that life is all about how you look at it.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think anyone would blame us for being upset, angry, frustrated. They wouldn’t blame us for yelling at the world, but I just don’t choose to look at life that way,” he said. “I’m in a wheelchair, but I can still kiss my wife. I’m batting a thousand, because I have my wife by my side. I have our daughter that she’s holding.”<\/p>\n
“I have my family and my friends that jump in every single day to help us,” he added. “I still have a lot going for me. We still have a lot going for us.”<\/p>\n
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