From Denver, Colorado
Age 38
Arthritis Fighter since age 5
Motivator and Goal Accomplisher
At times restricting situations may enter your life and you may wonder “why?” Those limitations can become something that’s hard to accept. When pain enters into life situations it can become paralyzing, both figuratively and literally. The brutal facts of life cannot be ignored. There are different ways of coping with the pain - we can suppress the pain or we can accept the pain. At the age of five, Wade Balmer had some very brutal life facts to face. Five-year-old Wade was diagnosed with dermatomysitis, a form of arthritis that causes muscle inflammation and weakness. (Yes, kids get arthritis too!) At a very young age his muscles were practically destroyed, not allowing him to be able to grow muscle-mass and severely limiting his flexibility. His parents tried their very best to keep him up to the normal speed of life. However, there was no question that Wade lived an abnormal life. With the low number of Pediatric Rheumatologists in the U.S., Wade and his family had to travel hours for treatment, across state borders and into cities across the east coast. There were days when he could not walk or get out of bed to continue a normal daily routine. His whole life Wade yearned to be like the other kids in his gym class. Growing up he never felt that he “fit in”; he was always the weak-link. Despite an unpredictable future living with arthritis, Wade always carried a happy and positive spirit.
Nowadays we can consider 38-year-old Wade a gym-class hero. Despite the aching and pain of living with Arthritis, Wade has been passionate and determined to see what he is physically and mentally capable of achieving. Toughing through the pain in order to prove that he could do anything, he completed six half-marathons and a full marathon, 13.1 and 26.2 miles of pure grit and (in Wade’s eyes) enjoyment through achievement. He has taken leaps and bounds in accomplishing his other fitness goals and dreams. Wade never imagined a future exercising in an actual gym. When he began physical therapy he told his therapist, “I want you to teach me to walk into a gym and not feel intimidated.” Training to overcome this fear helped in Wade’s motivation to reach the “unreachable”. He lives by the hashtag #nomorenevers. Wade lives his life checking things off his “never” list: from road biking 363 miles along the Oregon coast, to finally joining his first gym.
With the near physical impossibility of Wade increasing his muscle growth or gaining weight, it seems completely a mystery as to why Wade puts himself through more pain on top of the pain he already deals with in living with arthritis. Wade explains that he would not change his circumstances for anything in the world, that every day is a new day and brings different opportunities. “Life brings experiences that leave us all with scars, but they make us into the person that we are and that we must own,” he says. “It is our choice to count those scars as challenges or opportunities.” Wade continues, “Having arthritis has actually always given me this sense that the future will get better. I dare it to try otherwise! The future will be better, you just have to make it so.” Although Wade’s physical circumstances overall have not improved (his inflammation levels are still not under control despite many new medications), his outlook and attitude have improved. Wade is a perfect example of accepting your circumstances and making them better.
When pain and discomfort screams at you from every corner it can be so easy to give up. Why do I continue in my goals and dreams? Why do I come back after failure? Why do I wake up in the morning and keep trying? Don’t we all face a certain pain or crippling setbacks in our lives? Ones that refrain us from doing what we love most, or make our wildest dream seem impossible? Embrace the pain and move forward with a determination of #nomorenevers. One of the best Juvenile Arthritis Stories I’ve heard.
“Never get frustrated if you can’t reach a goal when you expected to. Take a breath, re-strategize and attack it from a different angle. Adapt. Learn how to do things in a different way. Someone wise once said that brick walls don’t get in our way to stop us, but to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”