According to my friend, Stephen Hawking loses more and more of his muscles’ ability to function every year and will eventually die when the muscle in his heart dies. Of course, this opened up a rash of questions my friend wasn’t able to answer.
So,
What exactly is the condition Stephen Hawking has?
How did he get it?
How does it work, and how will he eventually die?
How many years does he have left?
And what’s he going to do when he can’t move his fingers anymore?
I think Stephen Hawking has cerebral palsy. I had a friend in high school who had it, albeit not so severely, and seemed to have a lot of the same sypmtoms.
If he does have CP, he was born with it. I’m not exactly sure how it works, though. My friend said he would live to his 40’s or 50’s, probably, but nobody exactly knew. It didn’t seem to get any better or worse over time, it just stayed the same.
He was also one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, with a great sense of humor. Some of the kids were horribly mean to him, but he always shrugged it off. Most people seemed pretty understanding.
Actually, unless the diagnosis has changed since last time I read about him (and it could have), he has ALS - Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis - Also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
It is a progressive degredation of motor neurons. Your friend was quite correct that Stephen Hawking will continue to lose more and more motor function. However, he has already exceeded his expected lifespan by a large margin.
The diagnosis is ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) aka Lou Gehrig’s disease. This was asked before, and I thought possibly he has a different neurological disorder, as there are so many. One of the doctors said No, he has ALS. My reasoning is that no one with ALS has lived so long with it, being that they usually die from respiratory failure in a short time. I know there have been many inventions lately that have helped Hawkings, and the doctor said that that’s the reason he has survived so long.
I’m not convinced that he has ALS, but that’s the diagnosis and who am I to dispute that?
Oh, yeah, he got it while in college, as a young man, which is unusual. The Merck Manual says it usualy occurs after age 40 and the etiology is unknown. It also says that death usually occurs in 5 years. Motor neurons degenerate in the spinal cord, medulla, and motor cortex. My Merck Manual, however, is 1973, so that may have changed.
Well, I checked the web and found this . Now it says up to 30 years survival.
My late father-in-law, Keith, developed motor neuron disease in the last five years of his life. One of his doctors theorised that there may have been a juvenile episode of polio that predisposed him to his eventual demise many years later.
Keith’s problems became evident when he suffered a series of falls prior to being diagnosed with MND. He also noticed that his strength, balance and agility all deserted him over the space of six months or so. Very soon after that he became reliant on a walking frame to ambulate safely. This only lasted a short time until he became totally dependant on a wheelchair.
Concurrently, speech, swallowing and breathing became increasingly difficult as his muscles atrophied. Even the muscles that build up the palm of the hand wasted away.
At the time that he died (from the effects of respiratory failure) Keith was totally dependant on other people for all his activities of daily living. He couldn’t read anymore, he couldn’t talk, his hand strength was very weak.
I should note that Keith was 72 when he died, and that he had a mild problem with chronic obstructive lund disease prio to developing MND.
In comparison, Stephen Hawking developed MND at a much younger age, hence in his battle with the disease he has had youth on his side. However, when he does succumb to age, I would not be surprised to see a similarly quick decline as that described above.
I am no expert in neurology, but that won’t stop me from opening my mouth.
I believe Hawking does in fact have ALS. It is conceivable that he has a “benign” variant but even with “typical” ALS there is an 8 percent ten year survival.
One reason that he’s survived so long is that he has chosen to have mechanical ventilation. Given that respiratory failure is the cause of death in essentially all those afflicted with ALS, once you’ve prevented that (with mechanical ventilation) you can go on for a long, long time.
BTW, just to make it explicit: Motor Neuron Disease is essentially synonymous with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.