• I believe that the death of my baby brothe has affectid me the most. Nicholas died when i was eight, and i never fully recovered from it. When Nicholas was born, he had a degenerative nerve disorder of unknown origin that resembled ALD in the fact that the myelin was stripped from his cells. The main problem was that hes cells were being stripped a lot faster than with ALD. The normal progression of ALD is that without treatment the cells are stripped from the extremities in a couple of years;but the progression on nicholas's disorder was alot faster than that. The cells in his extremitieswithin six months. Living with someone who has a disability is hell; but losing that person is worse. Nicholas degenerated so quickly that it scared even me, and I was only eight. He was almost five, and that was four and a half years longer than they expected him to live so we couldn't expect more from him than that. He was dying by inches and was on life support for several months. We went to see him every day. I wasn't allowed in the ICU, but I still went. Then the day came when we had to take him off life support. He took three breaths on his own and then just stopped. I can never forget that day.