Upcoming Event Working To Involve The Community In ALS Awareness, Fundraising

An event is happening across the country, including here in the metro, to raise awareness for ALS. 

Christy Galyean with the ALS Association joined News 9 to discuss CEO Soak. 

“This is the 10 year anniversary of the viral sensation of the ice bucket challenge. But as I'm talking to people about that anniversary, I have found people that were too young to have participated or even know about it,” Galyean said. “So what we decided this year celebrating that anniversary, we wanted to bring that viral sensation back. We really wanna incorporate more community leaders, business leaders because a lot of them did do the soak 10 years ago.”

The CEO in CEO Soak, Galyean says, is not talking about the business leaders, it stands for Community Engagement Opportunity.

“Right now, 15 participants have registered to get soaked,” Galyean said. “Everything from a CEO of a company to people that are just passionate about trying to help find a cure. We’ll take anyone.”

The ice bucket challenge brought a lot of awareness to ALS, but there is still not a cure.

“Right now there are two medications that are available for our patients. But there's still so much more that needs to be done,” Galyean said.

Some facts about ALS:

1. ALS is commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. This is because of the career ending ALS diagnosis for baseball player Lou Gehrig.
2. ALS is fatal.
3. ALS can be hereditary. 
4. Veterans are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ALS and NFL players are four times as likely.

“It affects a person's ability to walk, to talk, to eat and eventually breathe,” Galyean said. “It's a horrible disease. The whole time your mind is perfectly fine. You know what is happening.”

The official kick off for CEO Soak is June 14. To find more information, click here.