KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Ned Patterson is outnumbered. He’s surrounded by women and girls, including his wife, three daughters and two granddaughters. Even his pets have been female — except for his fish.
“My fish, I declared him male, regardless,” Patterson said. “So I’ve got somebody.”
But don’t mistake Patterson’s cheeky observations as complaining. There is nothing more important to him than his family. And that has become increasingly true in the past several years.
“Attitude’s a choice, and you can either choose despondency or choose happiness, or choose love,” Patterson said.
That became a much more conscious choice back in 2017. It was that summer when Patterson said he noticed it wasn’t as easy to mow his lawn anymore.
His wife of nearly 40 years, Beth, noticed something was off as well.
“One day I saw him sway, and he’s a strong guy,” she said. “And I thought, something’s really wrong. And I noticed his gait had changed. And then the final straw was, on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, bloodwork came in the mail.”
That bloodwork had Beth concerned enough to pick up the phone and call the Mayo Clinic. Within five days, the Pattersons were packed up and heading to Minnesota for testing.
After a week at the clinic, the couple returned home to wait on the results. They came in the form of a letter, on Dec. 12, 2017. It said Ned Patterson had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, and that he had just 18 - 24 months to live.
“I lost it,” Beth said. “I just started, have you ever heard of the word keening? That’s what I started doing. And it took me about two to three months to come out of the shock from it, but I was still in full fear mode. My body was completely filled with shock and fear.”
But Beth soon turned that fear into action, researching the disease and how to combat the symptoms as if it were a full-time job. She said one of her big successes was finding a more nutritious food source for her husband, who now ingests all of his nutrients through a feeding tube.
But with that success also comes disappointment. Family dinners are not the same. Her husband can join in the conversation but not the consumption during a meal. And that’s been tough.
ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, according to the ALS Association. Patients with the disease eventually lose the ability to speak, eat, move and breathe.
As Ned has started to see some of these changes, he has managed to take most things in stride. He often focuses on what he’s grateful for, not what he’s disappointed to lose.
“I made a choice early on in this diagnosis, and I was blessed with my bride’s assistance, that I could either live in bitterness, lamenting the fact that I have this disease, and it’s taking these things away from me, or I can live in love and live in today and consider today a blessing,” he said.
Ned calls himself one of the lucky ones when it comes to ALS because he can still talk and be mobile, with some assistance. And he still works, setting up shop at a desk not too far from his bed.
Plus, he’s already beaten the odds he was given in that fateful letter. He’s crossed the five-year mark and has every intention of meeting new goals and keeping his social calendar full. That includes attending a concert by The Chicks at the end of this month.
And he and his wife are still full of endless hope, always on the lookout for a promising clinical trial or new treatment.
“Ned has said to me, almost daily as well, 'Let God’s light shine through you, and his love, and our love,'” Beth said. “He really means it when he says he’s blessed. I have a harder time with that, but he helps me see it.”
Ned also is happy to use his voice to raise awareness about the disease, adding that it’s tough to see so many other causes with a celebrity attached, from Michael J. Fox and Parkinson’s to Pat Summitt and Alzheimer’s.
“If I can be a voice for this illness, and say — there’s hope for us, take each day as a blessing, it’s not a death sentence, it’s a life sentence,” he said. “I’ve had to change my life in so many ways in order to cope with it and deal with it, but every day is something that the Lord has given me, and we’ll rejoice and be glad in it.”