Woman Plans Way To Communicate With Future Grandchildren Despite ALS Diagnosis

ALS is a devastating nervous system disease. It affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, leading to muscle control loss. As time progresses, the disease worsens. While this is daunting news for anyone to receive, one grandmother did not let it get her down. Rather than focus on the negatives, she decided to come up with a unique solution. This grandmother with ALS came up with the most innovative way to read to her future grandkids.

Videos by InspireMore

Della Larsen received the unfortunate diagnosis of ALS in April 2023. One of the symptoms that this disease can cause is speech changes. Della knew that she wanted to read to her future grandchildren, but she was fearful that she would not be able to do so with the progression of her disease.

Luckily, this future grandmother with ALS had a plan. She pre-recorded videos of herself reading some of her favorite books. She took to Instagram last year to share her project, Grandma’s Bookshelf, in which she recorded herself reading her favorite books. She placed a QR code in each of these books that her grandchildren could scan. Those codes would take them to the pre-recorded video of her reading these stories to them.

Della told Good Morning America, “I want them to know they were loved even before they were born.” Also, she was back on social media this past July, on TikTok. She reshares the same video from last year, addressing how the hardest part of having this disease is that she will be losing her ability to be a grandmother.

Lucky for her future grandkids, she did not back down so easily. With her “grandma’s bookshelf” idea, she is ensuring that her grandkids “know” her. She recorded herself reading 30 children’s books that she hopes her future grandkids will enjoy.

The source of the featured image can be found here.