Forums >Look What I Can Do!>The Pursuit of Happyness... You want something, go get it!
In a month, my oldest son will run the Dallas Marathon. He's 21 years old.
I had knee surgery a couple months ago, and haven't been able to train for the race this year. I wish I could run it with him.
My son is a graduate of Texas Scottish Rite Hospital (aka TSRHC, which is the primary benefactor of the Dallas Marathon).
For 10 years, we visited the hospital and were able to benefit from their services.
For 10 years, we sought a diagnosis for his condition.
The hospital worked to find a diagnosis and presented our son's medical condition at conventions and through medical journals. A geneticist from the UK learned of us through TSRHC and had previously identified a gene that was responsible for the symptoms my son has. The hospital worked with the geneticist to do a DNA test for our entire family and confirmed that our family has a very rare genetic condition.
The hospital helped resolve the mystery that plagued us for many years. The medical condition they have is extremely rare.
The best part of the story is that the gene mutation that causes the symptoms changes the outlook on life.
With his symptoms, doctors feared bad outcomes (from cystic fibrosis, lung disease, heart disease, or other organ issues).
With the diagnosis, the doctors do not fear for his life or his condition.
This creates a freedom for him to do what seemed impossible / improbable.
There are not many TSRHC graduates that ever have the ability to run a marathon.
As a graduate of TSRHC, he wants to run the race to prove that anything is possible.
As a parent of a TSRHC patient, I want him to prove that anything is possible.
I spent years telling my son what he couldn't do because of his condition. Then, I watched, the Pursuit of Happyness.
My son was diligently logging his miles on RunningAhead until recently. Give him a motivational shoutout through this thread. Over the next few weeks, he'll be putting in his long miles (19 this weekend). I'll direct him to this thread.
Life Goals:
#1: Do what I can do
#2: Enjoy life
Kercan,
What symptoms does your son have? Either way, it's awesome that he's going to run the marathon and do something that he prevously thought wasn't possible. Good luck!!
~Mike
Kercan, What symptoms does your son have? Either way, it's awesome that he's going to run the marathon and do something that he prevously thought wasn't possible. Good luck!!
To make a long story relatively short, my son(s) both have clubbed fingers and toes. See image below.
Doctors do not like to see that. Typically, it is a secondary result of a primary organ challenge (ie. Cystic Fibrosis, lung cancer).
Both my kids were born with clubbed fingers and toes (noticed within weeks of their birth). Both of their births were abnormal (extremely premature)
Additionally, they were both diagnosed at a very young age to have Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis (but since the DNA diagnosis, we now know that they don't have arthritis).
There are a couple of other symptoms as well, but the symptom that was most troubling to the doctors for many years was their fingers and toes.
It's not easy - "to never give up"...
Good luck to your son and your family in everything, kercan!
paces PRs - 5K - 5:48 / 10K - 6:05 / HM - 6:14 / FM - 6:26 per mile
I'm running the Cal International Marathon on Dec 7th (one week ahead of yours?). On these long runs I tell myself that taper time is coming soon, just gotta keep the pressure on for another couple weeks then I get to reap the rewards of all that hard work. Now's the time for that 'full court press'. Cal and Dallas are gonna be great!
Best of luck and training, kercan Jr.
Break on through
The feeling of accomplishment after completing your first marathon is great! You realize all the training and hard work leading up to it really did have a purpose!
"Not to touch the Earth, not to see the Sun, nothing left to do but run, run, run..."
Village people
I can't wait to hear how it goes. He sounds like quite a young man.
Everybody, thank you for your posts. Kencamet, yes, the race is December 14.
I guided him to this thread, but he's too shy to post on here. He might, but I doubt he will. He is reading it though.
He is a great guy! I'm super proud of him, but would also be proud of him if his abilities wouldn't allow for this journey.
Last weekend (15th), he attempted a 20 mile run, with a planned 2x10 mile loop. He stopped for a couple minutes at the university commons area to fill up his water bottle. A couple miles into his 2nd loop, his ankle bothered him, and he retreated and put in only a 14 mile run. His achilles is fine, and was able to run a couple miles the next day to check it out.
This past weekend, he did a 21 mile run, and felt great. I happened to call him while he was running, and we chatted about 3 minutes when he was 10 miles into the run when he was confident. We finished the conversation a couple hours later, and he was very fatigued and wonders WTH he signed up for. He doubted he could run an extra 5+ miles on race day. I assured him that it would hurt on race day as well, but that he's doing great and will do great on race day. Only 20 days to go, and he's doing great.
I also signed up for this race early this year, but had surgery a couple months ago and won't be able to run the race.
I plan to meet him at mile 20 and run the last 6 miles with him, and try to pace him to his goal time.
Looking forward to reading his race report! Go get 'em!
Live the Adventure. Enjoy the Journey. Be Kind. Have Faith!
Wow, Brian, awesome. Just saw this thread. Yeah, you tell your boy to go get it! He's got a great coach in you and it sounds like you are giving him great guidance.
Son of Brian, if you are listening, yeah you got this. If you can run 20 21, even if it hurt, and even if it caused you doubt, you CAN do the whole thing. I think probably most of us marathoners have had those moments of pain and doubt in training. I know I have. But you go get it! The only uncool thing is that your dad can't run it with you this time, but it sounds like there will be an opportunity to do that someday, thank God. Great job putting in the miles and doing the work -- now you are very close to reaping the rewards. Go go go!
[edited to correct the distance of the last long run, hallelujah!]
- Joe
We are fragile creatures on collision with our judgment day.
jfa
Even tho kercan can't (just this time), Son of kercan Can.
Good Luck !!!!
On New Years Eve day in 2008, I was looking through "WrongDiagnosis.com" at their symptoms and stumbled across this article that was published a few months earlier. For the previous 10+ years, I'd been going to "WrongDiagnosis.com" to find a link to their challenge, and couldn't find anything. That day, I found the missing link that had alluded everybody.
That same day, I forwarded the article to our doctor at TSRHC and asked her whether this is what they had. She called me the first business day in January asking permission to talk detailed specifics to the UK geneticist. She reached out to the geneticist at Leeds University that led to our DNA testing that revealed the exact same gene that the geneticist identified was mutated in all 4 of us. We had full diagnosis by February 2009. At the time, they had identified 5 families in the world that had this gene mutation, with our family being #5.
I started my racing career on January 1, 2009 for a couple of reasons.
-First, I finally had an answer to the mystery and felt like celebrating.
-Second, I wanted to race the "White Rock Marathon" (now Dallas Marathon) to support the hospital that cared for him and helped him.
-Third, in some weird way, I wanted to be in pain and understand the pain they feel.
I didn't need a confirmed diagnosis in February, 2009 to know that we found the answer to the mystery on 12/31/2008.
I began celebrating on 1/1/2009.
Consistently Slow
Training is the hard part. Trust your training. It is taper time. YOU GOT THIS!
Run until the trail runs out.
SCHEDULE 2016--
The pain that hurts the worse is the imagined pain. One of the most difficult arts of racing is learning to ignore the imagined pain and just live with the present pain (which is always bearable.) - Jeff
http://bkclay.blogspot.com/
Today is the day. He's at the start line and the race starts in an hour. It may be a long day due to some recent hip pain, but he's ready to go.
"Alex crossed the 15K at 9:35:39 am with a time of 01:25:32 and pace of 09:05 min/mile. Est. finish at 12:08pm."
He's doing great!
ETA:
"Alex crossed the Half at 10:11:20 am with a time of 02:01:13 and pace of 09:26 min/mile. Est. finish at 12:14pm."