ALS walk returning to the Nicola Valley

MERRITT – The ALS walk is returning to Merritt for the third straight year to continue raising awareness for the disease.

“This is a chance to come down and say hello to the family and say hello to dad, I know he would like to see people, because it is difficult for him to visit,” said Tammy Brown, organizer of the walk. “It’s a really good opportunity to just come down and show support for the family, the whole ALS community, and all of the unfortunate loses that families around the world have experienced.”

Merritt-resident and Tammy’s dad, Tony Caruso, suffers from ALS and the family has been working hard to fundraise for the disease, which doesn’t have a cure yet.

“Dad is currently in the end stages of ALS,” said Brown. “We feel really fortunate that he will hopefully make it to this walk next weekend. The end stages of ALS is difficult, he can’t walk, talk, eat, go to the bathroom without help or assistance, or shower. He’s on a breathing apparatus now, almost 24 hours, so it’s been a really hard thing to navigate.”

Taking care of Tony throughout the year as the disease has progressed has been difficult but the support of the family had to increase as the world changed.

“Particularly just with some of the restrictions put in during COVID, mainly with Interior Health, those have been some barriers to getting further assistance for dad,” added Brown. “It’s put a lot on the family to step up and support my mom who has been caring for him 24 hours a day at this point.”

According to ALS Canada, there are roughly 3,000 people in Canada with the disease, with over 200,000 people affected around the world. In the Nicola Valley, Brown said there have been several people reach out and share their experiences and support.

“Through doing these ALS walks, I’ve learned about other folks who have experienced it with family members, some that I have known for a long time and didn’t realize that they have lost loved ones to this, so we’ve made some connections there. There has also been new people that I have met that have lost loved ones to ALS who are especially keen to come and join us for the walk because it’s something near and dear to their heart as well and they know the difficulty of watching some one you love go through this disease.”

The goal of the walk is to continue to raise awareness and also fundraise money to find a cure.

“There are so many community members from Merritt and from Princeton, where my dad lived for a long time and grew up, and other surrounding community’s where family and friends come to help support us and walk with us,” said Brown. “We have had really good turn outs the last couple of years. As of last year we have raised $30,000 towards this cause and this year we are at around $6,500, so pretty close to our $10,000 goal and we fell like we should get there by the time the walk comes around.”

The walk is taking place on Saturday, June 17 at 1:00 p.m., starting at Rotary Park. Brown mentioned lots of way to help donate to the cause.

“I do have a fundraiser page on my Facebook, you can search up Tammy Brown, and you can find the donation page there. If you are coming to the walk, a lot of people bring cash or a cheque, and I can get the tax donation receipt sent to them through the ALS Society of BC. We also opened up an account at the bottle depot here in town and they’ve been taking bottles, if people just want to drop them off they sort through them and everything and it goes into an account and that account number is 434, you just have to let them know and they will do the work.”