Memphis region’s sole ALS clinic helps patients live the best they can
Eric Brown, a Semmes Murphey patient who has ALS, jokes with the nurses on his way to his room at Semmes Murphy's East Memphis clinic. (Patrick Lantrip/The Daily Memphian)
On his 50th birthday, Eric Brown of Jonesboro, Arkansas, traveled to a specialized clinic in Memphis where he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.
“With ALS, every day is different,” Brown said. “You may not be able to go to the bathroom. You may not be able to control it. You may fall. You find yourself trying to talk, but you can’t talk anymore. I could speak just like you a year ago. But now it’s affecting my throat, and I can’t swallow.”
The Semmes Murphey Clinic has diagnosed and treated patients with neurological disorders for more than a century, and once a month it hosts the region’s only multidisciplinary clinic for patients like Brown with ALS, which affects about 20,000 people in the U.S.
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Semmes Murphey ALS Dr. Tulio BertoriniAisling Mäki
Aisling Mäki covers health care, banking and finance, technology and professions. After launching her career in news two decades ago, she worked in public relations for almost a decade before returning to journalism in 2022.
As a health care reporter, she’s collaborated with The Carter Center, earned awards from the Associated Press and Society of Professional Journalists and won a 2024 Tennessee Press Association first-place prize for her series on discrepancies in Shelby County life expectancy by ZIP code.
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