Padecky: Cardinal Newman's Steve Adams not running away from epilepsy fight
Two years before his world would change forever, the warning signs began but Steve Adams didn’t see them. Like a thief in the night they came. Hidden from view they were, a faint image if he had noticed them at all. He was a freshman at Cardinal Newman, a teenager entering a rite of passage. So much was going on, so much to think about, the arm tremors were no more than a forgettable nuisance. A housefly to be dispatched.
In the beginning, maybe once a month his hands would betray Adams. They shake. No preamble. Just shake. Or Adams would hold something and then, as if listening to a command from someone else, his hands would lose their grip and a pencil or a cup or a piece of paper would fall to the ground. Adams would shake his head. Whatever.
Adams literally was a body in motion. He made it to state his freshman year as a cross-country runner. He was a smart kid. You could lose weight just watching Adams move about; he had so much energy to burn.
And then Adams stepped into that hotel elevator in Summit Bechtel Reserve in West Virginia in July 2013. Adams was attending the National (Boy) Scout Jamboree. The tremors now were occurring twice a week.
“I kinda lost awareness,” he said, “until I hit something.”
He hit the back wall of the elevator. He caromed upright. Ten seconds later Adams wobbled on his feet. A few of the seven other people in the elevator steadied him. Then about 10 seconds later, maybe 15 seconds he guesses, Adams couldn’t be caught.
“I might have fallen (to the floor),” he said.
“My son did fall to the floor of the elevator,” his father, Dale, says he was told later. Dale was back in West Virginia for the Jamboree as well but not with his son at that moment. Adams was taken to his hotel room. Weak of walk, he was supported by two good Samaritans, who put his arms around their necks.
Adams lay in his bed for 30 minutes and decided to press on with the Scout activities.
“I thought it was muscle spasms,” said Adams, not one to give up and give in easily, a trait that would come to define him in the next 17 months.
Back home a week later Adams went to Sutter Hospital for tests. Initial results offered two possibilities - Adams either had a tumor or epilepsy.
“I was hoping it was a tumor,” said Adams, quite possibly the only human in recorded history who has ever said that. “If it was tumor it could be removed and I’d be done with it.”
It wasn’t a tumor. Adams, 17, had and has Juvenile Onset Epilepsy.
And thus began the quite incredible, remarkable, astounding journey to where Steve Adams is today.
He will run Saturday in Fresno at the state cross-country championships.
If there was such a thing as the CIF Comeback Athlete of the Year, Adams gets the award and, to be perfectly fair, a parade and Jimmy Kimmel as well.
“Steve is the guy who came off the floor of an elevator to run in the state meet,” said his coach, Chris Puppione. “This is like the St. Louis Rams taking a quarterback (Kurt Warner) from the Arena League who becomes the Super Bowl MVP.”
Puppione, a 1997 SSU graduate with a degree in creative writing, understands and employs quite well the gift of hyperbole. It is not only warranted but even necessary to exaggerate how Adams made it this far. Words like “courage” and “determination” are faint and inefficient indicators, representing much more modest achievements, like running with a cold or a sore ankle.
Adams has reached another level of compliment, an elevation rarely occupied, which will be represented in the following paragraph.
“I never hid this,” Adams said. “I just didn’t want to talk about it. I was and I guess I still am working out how to deal with epilepsy and what is expected of me. I struggled to get a sense of what I was and where I was going.”
Very few people know of his condition: His parents, his close friends and maybe a teammate or two. That’s it. “Hey! Guess what? I am an epileptic!” That’s not usually a conversation starter among teenagers in hallways between classes.
Adams doesn’t have a lot of time to debate internally how much should he reveal. Fact is, the kid who wants to be an aeronautical engineer is working hard to understand the disease and all of its complex tributaries.
Consider what is on his plate.
The base definition: Epilepsy is a disruptive neurological condition that affects the nervous system. Brain cells may fire uncontrollably at four times the normal rate.
The possible side affects from the medications necessary to control epilepsy: Fatigue, dizziness, weight gain, loss of bone density, speech problems, depression, organ inflammation and suicidal thoughts or behaviors.
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