LIBERTY Family to keep ALS site going

The Liberty native wanted others with the diagnosis to have more information about the disease.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
LIBERTY -- The wife and son of a township native, who documented his battle with a terminal disease online to help others, plan to continue his mission.
Doug Eshleman, 43, of New Albany, a Columbus suburb, a graduate of Liberty High School and Youngstown State University, died Nov. 28 after a four-year struggle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
More commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, ALS is a fatal progressive degenerative disease affecting the motor cells of the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms include muscle weakness, paralysis and impairment of speech, swallowing ability and breathing. Most people die within two to five years of the onset of symptoms.
Keeping it up: His wife, Irene, and their son, Dan, 20, plan to continue the Web site Eshleman started shortly after he was diagnosed with the disease in August 1997.
"He didn't want other people to have the same problems finding information about the disease like he did when he was first diagnosed," said Irene Eshleman, a graduate of Campbell Memorial High School and YSU.
The couple met while working in the university's Maag Library while both were students.
The Web site, alssurvivalguide.com, includes a journal Eshleman kept of his struggle as well as information about support groups, statistics and research about the disease and a forum allowing participants to discuss their difficulties.
Much research: He pored over all of the information he could find about his illness, reading newspaper articles and subscribing to several medical news groups.
Before his diagnosis, Eshleman worked as a special investigator with the U.S. Treasury Department. Irene Eshleman is a real estate investment manager at Nationwide Insurance, Columbus, where the couple moved in 1983. Her mother, Irene Wallace, remains in Campbell.
A Phoenix man, who also has ALS, has taken over the forum section of the site.
Eshleman remained home throughout his illness with help from the Hospice chapter in their area. His widow wants people to understand the difficulties of living with a debilitating disease while encouraging them to continue living.
Keep living: "I hope people realize that a terminal diagnosis doesn't have to be a death sentence," Irene Eshleman said. "There's still plenty of living you can do. We concentrated on what we could still do together and didn't worry about what we couldn't. We packed a lot of living into the last few years."
dick@vindy.com