Home > News Family starts fundraising to buy van for Lynn man suffering from ALS-like disease Originally Published on Thursday, August 09, 2012 By Cyrus Moulton / The Daily Item

LYNN Patrick Cogan said he doesn't like to ask for help.

But two years after being diagnosed with a debilitating and degenerative neuromuscular disease called Friedreich's Ataxia, the Cogan family is seeking help raising money for a van and a service dog to help Patrick and money to help provide dogs for other families.

"The time is going to come when I do need help but I'm going to do as much right now as I can," Patrick Cogan said at his apartment on Wednesday. "The goal is to raise money for a van." He said he already has a service dog, which was donated to the family, "but (the trainer) doesn't get any federal funding and so whatever we can give back to them we will."

Cogan said he was diagnosed with Friedreich's Ataxia in December 2010. He said he and the family believed for years that another and more benign disorder was causing the pain in his feet, and balance and coordination problems that had bedeviled him since childhood. But he went to see a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital after suffering several falls. He recalled the neurologist's advice when she gave him the diagnosis.

"'Don't Google it,' the neurologist told me, and gave me one website to visit to learn about the disease," he said. "So I Googled it, and it scared the crap out of me."

Patrick's mother Helen Cogan described Friedreich's Ataxia as "the evil cousin of Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease," which she said is a similar but more well-known - and well-researched - disease.

The Cogans referred to the disease as "life-shortening," and Patrick Cogan said most patients eventually succumb to heart disease or lung problems as a result of the disease.

Patrick said he is thankful he is not at that stage.

But the disease has begun to impact his life. He reports difficulty typing and texting - unfortunate since he just got an unlimited texting plan on his phone, he joked. He increasingly uses a wheelchair since he feels safer in public in a chair than when he is using a walker or arm crutches.

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Family starts fundraising to buy van for Lynn man suffering from ALS-like disease