In 2018, Brad Smith was at church when a fellow congregant noticed he was struggling to put on his suit jacket. Brad, then 37, was nursing a month-old shoulder injury from playing dodgeball with the church youth group, but it kept getting worse.
Brad endured months of muscle and nerve testing and MRIs to rule out a spinal cord injury before visiting a clinic in his hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, that specialized in treating a very rare neurological disease. At the end of the appointment, the doctor offered him a hug, and then a diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. It may as well have been a death sentence.
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, attacks the nerve cells that allow you to move your muscles, until you can no longer move, speak, swallow, or breathe. Doctors can manage symptoms and slow progression modestly with a handful of approved drugs, but there is no cure. The average life expectancy after diagnosis is two to five years, and there are more than 33,000 Americans living with the disease.
Brad walked to his car in a state of shock. On his drive back to work—he was a technology executive—he stopped at a parking lot, cried, and appealed to God. “I said the most desperate prayer in my life, asking Heavenly Father if this was really ALS,” Brad told me. “I remember getting a very clear answer: Everything is going to be all right.”
Within three years of being diagnosed with ALS, Brad had lost control of his entire body. When it came time to tell their three children—their oldest was in first grade at the time, their youngest was just 1—his wife, Tiffany, sat them down, had them put on oven mitts, and asked them to try to build something with Legos. It was nearly impossible. “That’s what Dad’s ALS is doing to him,” she told them.
