"Vash will always be remembered as a leader, a brother, a mentor, a friend, a homie...ALS is a serious thing, and it has claimed this soldier's life. Vash tried to fight it, even though he knew he was dying but he told none of us until it was too late. The disease had consumed all of his muscles, causing him to pass...May Vash R.I.P."
- Dan A.
Vash Stampede was born on July 4, 1984 and was diagnosed with ALS in November 2003. He passed away on the morning of December 7, 2003. He was 19 years old.
"He had it since he was seventeen," said Vash's brother, Dan, "but he never went to see what was wrong. I guess he was afraid."
Even before the diagnosis, Dan had been made more aware of the disease by seeing its effects firsthand. According to Dan, the first symptom Vash had experienced was a pain in the arms when he drove his car, which he loved to do. Then he began to stumble and lose his balance, and over the course of two years, gradual muscle loss followed suit.
"I couldn't believe it actually," said Dan when he was told the diagnosis. "I didn't want to believe it at first, but then I began to accept it."
As ALS took its course, Vash could see his life slipping slowly away from him.
"He was losing everything he worked for," said Dan. "He lost Tila [his girlfriend], his business, everything."
On November 26, Vash had a seizure that put him in and out of a coma for seven hours. Discharged from the hospital, he had another seizure and lapsed into another coma. Vash died in his sleep from respiratory failure after spending 11 days in the hospital.
What got me interested in ALS and writing this article was Vash's battle with the disease. His loss of voluntary movement first in his arms and then legs were characteristic of limb-onset ALS, but I wondered, for if most cases were adult-onset, how and why did Vash get it when he was still a teen?
Dan had speculated on his brother's ALS in being genetically inherited, but this has not yet been proven. Recently, Dan had undergone a gene test to compare his genes to those of his brother's. He was unspecific in which genes they [the lab] looked at, but said the results showed some similarities between the gene samples.
It is my guess that susceptibility genes were compared between Vash and Dan, since there had been no known family history of the disease. Doctors may have been looking into various genes that played a role in neurons and compared any variations they found in Vash's genes to Dan's.
For now, Dan has pinned an ALS ribbon to his backpack, a tribute to his brother and as a reminder of the disease that killed him.