Being able to tell your loved ones ‘I love you’ is something many people take for granted every day, but one Oklahoma man knows how precious it is after a disease left him unable to communicate with his family for months.
Three years ago Carl Phelps started showing the first symptoms of ALS around the time his own sister died of the very same disease. “Everyone was speaking with ease except him,” his wife Janice said. “It was a real struggle getting words out, but he knew he had ALS.”
Shortly after, Phelps was diagnosed with the nervous system disease and he quickly started to lose physical abilities, had to get fitted for a feeding tube, and had to learn sign language when he lost his ability to speak. But when he started to lose control of his fingers and hands, he had no way to communicate with his friends and family.
However, that all changed when VisuALS, a program started by four students from Oklahoma Christian University, developed a program and an eye-tracking device that allows him to control a computer to ‘type’ and ‘speak’. And when the students finally finished the software and had Phelps try it out, he was able to say ‘I love you’ to his wife for the first time in months.
“I can’t tell you how great it felt to have your husband tell you that he loves you when he can’t even speak,” Janice said. “It was wonderful, I wanted to cry… It’s just been wonderful to be able to communicate with Carl. It just happened at the right time for us. It was a God thing.”
“I think we all got kind of emotional — I definitely teared up a bit,” said Preston Kemp, one of four students on the team. “For us, it was an engineering project, but Carl made it real for us. He was able to tell his wife he loved her again, and that was so incredibly powerful and impactful.”
Watch the entire video below to see the awesome moment this man gets to speak to his wife for the first time in months.
Can you imagine not being able to communicate with your loved ones for months? Let us know what you think in the comments below and please SHARE this with friends on Facebook.
[Featured image: Oklahoma Christian University]
Device Lets Man With ALS Tell His Wife ‘I Love You’ is an article from: LifeDaily