Visiting Rainer Grimm

published at 09.12.2023 22:01 by Jens Weller
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I've had the opportunity to meet with Rainer Grimm this week during a short trip to southern Germany.

As both Rainer and myself are living a busy life, this was only the second time where our calendars aligned to meet for coffee and cake or lunch. We've had an interesting conversation going from ALS to C++, conferences and whats up in our private lives. My motivation for this post is the ALS part.

You may know Rainer through his books, talks, trainings and his blog. This year Rainer Grimm contributed to the online track of Meeting C++ with his talk Concurrency in C++20: A Deep Dive. Due to his recent diagnosis with ALS, which he went public with in the end of October. This allowed me to speak about his situation during Meeting C++ during the good morning session and the Meeting C++ update, to let the audience know about his situation. Some folks thanked me for this, as they've missed Rainers Blog announcement about his progressive nerve condition. Which is why I now share this also on my blog with you.

One of the plans Rainer spoke about during my visit is that he will post regular updates on his situation and plans, which he has done this week. I'm happy that he was able to travel to a local conference to give a course and a talk, Rainer has hopes to know more on treatment and further perspectives after his visit in the ALS Center in Ulm. Overall he is in good hands, but is also keen to extend his horizon on knowledge, trials and treatments for ALS. You may remember ALS as the disease of the ice bucket challenge, this article about its results will give you a good overview where things are standing. Wikipedia, google and other pages can increase your knowledge on ALS further.

Right now Rainer Grimm is at the beginning of his ALS journey. As this progresses slowly, Rainer will be more and more affected, and the cost of communication will slowly rise for him. While his personality, capability of thoughts and knowledge is going to be present for most of the ALS progression to my understanding.

Where you can help Rainer Grimm

As mentioned, Rainer Grimm is looking for information about treatment, living with ALS and lots of the connected topics. His first post on the blog already has yielded many emails and new contacts for him. This has not only connected him to the medical side, but also to the existing ALS community in Germany and beyond.

Rainer has an optimistic and positive view of the future, he hopes that maybe one of the drugs currently in trial can help him live a longer life and maybe slow or halt the progression of ALS. The time since the ice bucket challenge and its funding has given a better understanding of ALS, and new drugs are coming to market. Though its the nature of ALS that due to its progression its hard to make plans for the future.

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