Tonight's speaker was Cheryl Tsieprati, a health care professional for over 40 years. Her husband, Ismail Tsieprati, has been living with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) for more than 30 years. ALS is a disease that causes muscles to deteriorate over time. Cheryl mentioned that people with ALS usually only live around 5 years after their diagnosis. Through love, support, and an affinity for life, Ismail persevered. After 10 years, Ismail began to lose all muscles control and it was hard to communicate. Cheryl and Ismail developed a way to communicate through Ismail's eye blinking. Cheryl would call out numbers and letters and Ismail's blinks indicated which figure he wanted to select. Eventually spelling out words. Pushing through, they eventually wrote a story: One Blink at a Time. An upbeat, inspirational autobiographical book about living happy and productive lives despite adversities. Ismail wrote every other chapter of the book by communicating through blinking.
Cheryl shared a passage from the book written by Ismail with us. A truly inspiring story! Check out their book on Amazon.com.
