Borje Salming has lost the ability to speak due to debilitating effects of ALS

Folks, I regret to inform you that Borje Salming's fight against ALS is not going well.

Salming's wife Pia Salming held an interview with Swedish publication Expressen last week and shared some of the details of her husband's difficult battle with ALS. The latest development for the Hall of Famer is that he can no longer speak and he requires the use of an iPad to speak for him.

From Expressen:

Börje Salming slowly keys in the words on his Ipad.

His ALS is relentless and leaves him unable to speak anymore.

The speech synthesizer on the iPad reads out the greeting to all supporters:

"I am thinking of you."

Then Salming bursts into tears.

For the first time since they received the ALS verdict, Börje and his wife Pia choose to tell about their new life.

About the hard times, about the better ones. About the medicine stopped at customs - and about the frustration and anger about how difficult it is to get the right help as an ALS sufferer and their relatives.

"It's a pain every day to see how bad Börje is," says Pia to Expressen. "We are completely exhausted, the whole family. We've done just about everything, and he's only getting worse."

Börje is forced to get his nutrition from a feeding tube and requires Pia to take care of most of the household duties. Worse than any of that though, Pia reports that Börje is suffering from severe depression as a result of his illness and that they have been denied drugs that would help ease his pain. Currently there is only one drug for ALS treatment approved in Sweden and efforts to obtain other drugs have been thwarted at the border. The family is now considering moving back to Canada, specifically Toronto where Börje played with the Toronto Maple Leafs, to get him treatment but they're not sure Börje himself would be well enough to travel. 

"You feel like an ant fighting against the whole wide world. We are under stress with the clock, he is getting a little worse week by week," Pia says.

The emotion and frustration in Pia's words are simply heartbreaking.

"I want to be able to be the wife I want to be for my husband in the last months of his life - not like we have now," she says. And then I want to help others, I have read so many horror stories. It's so horrible on so many levels. How the hell can it be like this?"