In January 2018, the former Navy football player noticed he was having subtle, infrequent issues with his speech. By the summer of that year, the speech issues had gotten worse and Tidwell was also experiencing upper body muscle twitching.
“True to the male ego, it was this getting weaker issue that finally convinced me to go to the doctor,” Tidwell wrote.
Soon thereafter, Marine Corps Major Tidwell found himself being evaluated in a neurology clinic at a military hospital. That was the first time a doctor mentioned the possibility of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease.