Row, row your boat – – – even with Multiple Sclerosis or Breast Cancer

You gotta’ respect a person who uses his pain to win. “During a race, … your muscles are on fire …. but you know the pain will subside. When I have to go to the hospital {with an multiple sclerosis attack), it’s like having someone pick at the back of my eyes, just tearing it up …. I don’t know how long it’s {the pain} gonna last…. Before every race, I think about the hospital …. , ” Ian Finn, Lowell, MA high school senior and competitive rower who lives with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Finn rowed with his team in the 44th Head of the Charles Regatta. He knows that MS might someday prevent him from rowing at the level he does now. That makes moments like these, “Pretty sweet”, he said.

At the Regatta, Finn met Laura Schwanger, age 50, who won bronze in the arms-only singles discipline at the recent Paralympic Games in Beijing. Schwanger became paralyzed from the waist down shortly after being diagnosed in 1982. She retired from competitive athletics (track and field and other paralympic games) in 1996.

Shwanger says that she always knew that MS wouldn’t kill her. But when she developed breast cancer in 2006, she knew that cancer could kill her. After the cancer treatments, she read documentation that rowing and paddling is recommended for breast cancer survivors. With the same determination she’d used before, she learned the sport and the rest is history.

Shwanger told a reporter that the paralympics could be an option for Finn if his disability gets worse. I have a hunch that regardless of what happens, Finn will “land on his feet”. He’s learned invaluable lessons about living with pain, working with obstacles and resilience. Just like Schwanger, he’s used what he’s learned from illness to make him stronger.

You don’t have to be a competitive athlete to be a success story. How have you taken what you’ve learned from chronic illness and allowed it to transform you to be a stronger, more resilient person?