Before a routine physical last August, Kerry Gray made a list of some bothersome minor ailments.
The 56-year old president of Associated Advertising Agency, didn't think the unrelated twitches, muscle cramps and sinus drainage meant anything. He was concerned, though, that his golf swing was off.
His doctor didn't suspect much either but sent him to a neurologist to be sure. The neurologist ordered some tests, then some more tests.
Gray got curious, so he got on the Internet and plugged in his symptoms.
"Oh, I've got ALS," Gray told Marilyn, his wife of almost 28 years.
"You do not," she said.
After more rounds of testing, in early January it was confirmed: Gray has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Marilyn broke down.
"Well, I told you two months ago," joked Gray, already using humor and a positive attitude as armor in his fight against the terminal disease.
'He's just crazy'
The Kerry Gray most people know is an affable and creative businessman. But his closest friends tell of a history of wild behavior.
"He's just crazy," said friend Johnny Tarrant, who owns Quik Print in Wichita and Topeka. "He's been known to eat flowers -- fresh flowers."
Gray walks through dangerous parts of cities such as Washington, D.C., simply for the experience.
While staying at a St. Louis hotel with Tarrant and other Wichita businessmen and friends, Gray jumped out of his 12th-story window three times and hung on its ledge just for fun.
"In addition to being free-spirited and fun-loving, he's also the guy you turn to, to get something done," Tarrant said.
And so it is with ALS. Gray intends to market awareness of the disease like an advertising campaign.
"It occurred to me maybe there's something I can do to make people more aware of it... and help get support for it," Gray said.
"He's not about ready to give up on anything," said Gray's friend Mike Miller, who is in regional sales with the printing company McCormick-Armstrong.
"Of course, being Mr. Thorough, he hands me... a fact sheet about ALS from A to Z," Miller said.
It's a sheet Gray gives to friends and associates that lists statistics he's learned about the disease: There's no known cause or cure. Fifty percent of all ALS patients die within 18 months of diagnosis. Only 20 percent survive five years. Progressive muscle weakness leads to paralysis and death by asphyxiation.
There's something else on Gray's two-sheet handout as well. It's a statement that he's preparing for the worst but planning for the best.
Except for a failing voice, he asks, "Why should I feel bad now?"
Things to do today
Gray decided to start telling friends and associates about his disease because of his quickly weakening speech.
Each Monday he has to speak as president at the Wichita Rotary Club's weekly meetings.
"Boy, is it difficult," Gray said of concentrating on enunciating at the podium.
He has a lengthy personal and professional to-do list he's tackling while he can.
Gray figures he will have some help with the list since his agency has clients in banking, health care, extended care and the mortuary business, which "I thought was funny."
While Gray jokes, most all his friends get emotional about his situation.
"I was crushed," said Pres Huston, Associated's chairman emeritus, who hired Gray in 1973 when Gray absolutely demanded a job as the agency's delivery boy and mailroom assistant.
"He's doing a marvelous job of not letting it just demolish him," Huston said. "I mean, some people would probably go home and just sit there."
On the January day Gray's longtime friend Mike Oatman left Kansas for treatment of terminal liver cancer -- from which the broadcaster did not return -- Oatman gave Gray advice for dealing with his situation.
He said Gray must be his own doctor, and he needs to have frequent talks with God.
So each morning on the way to work, Gray and God have a chat as the sun comes up.
"I'm really looking at this positively," Gray said. "I realize there could be a negative ending, but hey, it's the same ending that's going to happen to everybody."