Editorial

A good life, lived under most difficult challenges

Saturday, February 22, 2020

Chris Batrano was a father to two sons, a partner, a son and a brother.

Batrano
Photo provided

He was a graduate of Poplar Bluff High School and Three Rivers College.

He was a systems programmer.

He was a musician.

He was a Mizzou fan.

Batrano, who was 51 when he passed Feb. 7, was many more things than his diagnosis — ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

It is perhaps because of his determination to be more than that debilitating and devastating disease that we know him best.

“Music is a place I can go to get away from the world I live in,” Batrano told the Daily American Republic in 2015, when he released his debut CD. He would go on to release a second, all instrumental album.

Almost entirely paralyzed at that time, Batrano’s tracks were composed chord by chord, beat by beat through the use of eye-tracking computer software and the movement that remained in a single finger.

“I lose myself in the creation, hopefully, but not always, of something beautiful. It keeps me from going to the dark places in my mind,” Batrano said at the time.

He communicated through email, using the same computer software.

Batrano lost the ability to speak in 2012 when he was placed on a ventilator because of the progressive, degenerative disease that causes the death of the motor neurons responsible for voluntary movement and muscle control.

Batrano
Photo provided

ALS most commonly strikes those between the ages of 40 and 70.

Batrano was 28 when he was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and began to watch all of the big and little things we take for granted every day slip away.

Only about 10 percent of those diagnosed live longer than five years. Batrano lived with the illness for 23 years.

But Batrano fought to retain those things that were precious to him, like his music and connection to family.

It is a lesson we should take to heart, both in the value of the time we have and the people who are important to us.

Within three years of his diagnosis, Batrano progressed from using a cane, to a walker to a wheelchair.

He was placed on the ventilator two weeks before his youngest son’s third birthday.

But he found ways to stay connected.

Technology allowed him to use a computer-generated voice to practice reading with his youngest son when the boy entered kindergarten.

It allowed him to play online computer games with his oldest son after the young man joined the U.S. Navy.

“I even manage to win every once in a while,” Batrano joked in 2015.

It allowed him to work on the CD with his brother, who was states away.

And it allowed Batrano to share his story.

“I prefer to concentrate on the things I can still do, and most of them involve a computer,” Batrano said in 2015.

“I could fill pages with the problems ALS is causing in my life, but everyone has problems and I still think I have a pretty good life with Christel (Valles) and my two sons and daughter-in-law,” Batrano said two years later.

How many of us wake up each day with that perspective, and fewer challenges in front of us?

— Daily American Republic

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