That's how I started running. I pushed past the pain and kept on running. Running was something that I could control. It was only I who could make myself run faster or longer or make it more exciting. I had to push. When I run, I felt great. The health benefits where icing on the cake so to speak.
I started out first with a mile, then a little bit more. I thought, if my boss, who was a three-donut-a-day man could run, so could I. Now, almost 17 years since my first 5K and the subsequent 10k's, half-marathon's, marathons, ultra-marathons(50k's and 46.2 miler), I still push past the pain.
I'm a bit smarter now. I run mostly on soft trails, I take rest days, but I keep on running. I will be running for many years to come. I get my inspiration from amazing people like Mr. Harry Nix. When you meet someone like him, you understand the word perserverance a bit more. I interviewed Mr. Nix this month and would like to share his story with you.
Keep Getting Around Harry Nix--Lifelong Rheumatoid Arthritis Patient
Harry Nix lives life to the fullest and doesn’t let pain get in the way. His straightforward premise is that the only way to get around is to keep getting around.
After only a few months married to his wife Bobbie, he had his first episode with arthritis. It was 1947. At age 20, his knee was so swollen that it was frozen, and he couldn’t move or bend it. Arthritis hit other joints in his body. At one point, a doctor wanted to put him in a full-body cast. Bobbie said, “No way, I’m not living with a man in a body cast, let’s get out of here,” and they walked out the door. He kept walking. Nix says that the truth is that the body cast would probably have finished him off. There wasn’t much research on what was then called rheumatitis. Activity was what saved him.
Nix, a metro Atlanta native, worked as an executive for a big-six CPA firm and went on to build his own successful businesses. “In work and in life,” he often said, “there are no problems, only opportunities.”
He would play golf regularly and would sometimes take 20 aspirin a day to get through a round of golf. “I learned to self-manage with physical activity. I golfed a lot and then I would sit in a warm shower and use my fingers to crawl up the wall so that I could reach my arms above my head,” said Nix. “Sometimes you just have to endure the pain; that, and have a wife who will put hot packs on your feet and ankles when an episode flares up,” he says with a big smile.
Nix underwent many surgeries for his arthritis, including two major surgeries for spinal stenosis, a knee replacement, all of his toes on both feet broken and reset, and then recently had a quadruple bypass. “I still have my hips and hope that I don’t have to have them done any time soon,” he said.
“I’m thankful for the many people in my life that helped me through this. They helped me to get where I am today despite my arthritis,” says Nix. “I will never forget my therapist, Dina Schmidt. I called her the muscle girl, and she worked with me twice a day for two to three hours after my surgery on my feet. She helped me to get walking again.”
Growing up, Harry’s daughter Nancy doesn’t remember ever hearing her dad complain. “He would go to work every day and travel for his job. We never knew it if he had any pain. It never stopped him from building an amazing barn in our back yard for my horse or building a brick patio by himself. I do remember that he would walk down the driveway backwards to get the mail,” she said.
Never has a day gone by that Nix wasn’t aware of his arthritis; however, there are varying degrees. Sometimes life was miserable, with episodes lasting five or six weeks, and then his world would return to normal. Golfing. Building. Working.
At 84 years old, he still gets the mail every day. Only now, he doesn’t walk backwards; it just takes a bit longer.
