The problems started for Al Pettit five years ago with a nagging weakness, and a peculiar feeling beneath his skin.
“One day I was sitting on the toilet. I looked down, and I noticed my calf was wiggling,” said the former Mississauga firefighter. At the time, he was on a seven-week trip to the Philippines. He attributed the twitching to his tiring travels, and to overindulging in foreign beer.
But at home a couple of months later, he still felt weak and his calf was still wiggling. He tinkered with his heart medication, but “then both calves started,” he said.
While waiting for doctors to figure out the problem, Mr. Pettit, a 238-pound firefighter who had been having trouble mustering the strength to pick up a ladder, did a little Internet research.
“I diagnosed myself with ALS,” he said.
Eventually, Mr. Pettit's doctors came to the same conclusion: He was battling Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig's disease, an incurable neurodegenerative disease.
“Basically, if they tell you you've got ALS, you're screwed,” he said. “… It's just a matter of time.”
A small collection of Ontario firefighters know that all too well.
At least seven out of the province's 10,500 full-time firefighters have recently developed ALS, including two pairs from the same stations. One of the pairs, who worked most of their lives together at Mississauga's 500-person fire force, are in the midst of losing their battles with ALS. The other pair, from a 30-person fire hall in Owen Sound, Ont., have already succumbed to the disease.
There's no medical consensus on what causes ALS. But the fact that so many firefighters have contracted it – and that their relationships overlap – is a contravention of incredible odds: Statistically, only one or two people in 100,000 get the disease.
“The fact that this has happened in seven firefighters is a concern,” said Lorne Zinman, director of the ALS clinic at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. “It certainly bears further investigating.”
Complicating the issue is the fact that occupational health and safety statistics are not tracked in Canada. Partly as a result, wary scientists caution that the deaths of the Ontario firemen could be no more unique than those of the 3,000 others felled by ALS in Canada each year; the link between their quick demise and the toxicity of their jobs could be sad happenstance.
The counterargument is backed by a small but increasing number of firefighters who feel their brethren wouldn't be perishing from this cruel disease if they'd worked jobs that spared their lungs from vacuuming in toxic chemicals.
While science doesn't yet support their case – no major studies have explored the link between firefighters and ALS – it's buoyed by an increasing amount of anecdotal heft.
The second in his generation
The wheelchair ramp – a sturdy wooden bridge from the gravel driveway into the house – took up most of Nancy Blair's garage for a month more than she needed it.
**** It was something to hang on to after her husband, retired Owen Sound Fire Captain Jim Blair, died in June, at 59, of ALS. In his final days, the gruff, 240-pound firefighter, hardened by a military background, was reduced to 90 pounds, with no voice. The disease ate him up in 2 1/2 years: about half the time doctors originally suggested.
Mr. Blair's diagnosis in 2005 prompted the family to plunge with warp speed into retirement activities they once planned to pursue leisurely. They managed a European bus tour and a Hawaiian cruise. Then the impossibilities began for Mr. Blair, including travelling, even walking up a few steps into the house.
That's when a large team from the city fire hall showed up to build the ramp. Doug Barfoot, one of the squad's health and safety representatives, said the support was not surprising: The small fire hall has been historically tight-knit.
