Classmate Highlight - Jeffrey Barry

It was great to hear from Peter and we wish him the best with his battle with Charcot Marie Tooth Disease. If anyone can beat it, Peter can!

Jeffrey Barry has had quite a year or two. A new wife, a baby boy and now a new home. He wanted to share with us his adventures over the last 10+ years. Enjoy his story!
Jeffrey writes:

To the WUHS class of 1987:

My life since graduating WUHS and subsequently St Lawrence University can be summed up as follows:

“There is a difference between making a living and having a life…”

This was uttered to me by a colleague on my first snowy day in South America in June 1992 and it has always been at the fore front of my thoughts everyday since.

Some of my friends will remember that after spending my first winter home after graduating college and teaching skiing at Killington, I was fortunate enough to get a job teaching skiing in Portillo Chile (http://www.skiportillo.com/) the following summer.

For a guy who never had any athletic prowess for anything in high school, it came as a surprise to me that skiing could feel so “natural.” It was not only the physical act of skiing but the teaching of it to others which really took hold of me. For the first time in my life I had found something I was truly passionate about. It was not just the sport of skiing but the sense of achievement I received after helping groups of students gain their own sense of passion for the sport.

After that first summer spent putting my BA in French to use by learning Spanish, I was hooked. I was offered a job at Heavenly in Lake Tahoe for the following winter so I packed up the Saab and to California I went.

I spent the next seven years as the walking definition of the “professional” ski bum. I would spend my winters in Lake Tahoe and my summers in Portillo. My mom still lives on High Street so I would make sure to come home every spring before going to South America and be there in the fall before heading back to Lake Tahoe.

While my last summer teaching skiing in Portillo was the summer of 1998, I continued working at Heavenly until the end of the 2007 ski season. I had started out as just another front line ski instructor. I continued my professional development by joining the Professional Ski Instructors of America (P.S.I.A.) and eventually became a technical and teaching examiner, being paid by P.S.I.A. to go to different resorts in California and help other instructors improve both their skiing and teaching skills. At Heavenly I worked my way up through the ranks into management. During my last two seasons at Heavenly I was the manager of the California Adult Ski/Snowboard School. At the peak of the season I had 2 supervisors and nearly 200 instructors working at my location which was typically budgeted to bring in just over a million dollars. If you were at Heavenly and taking a lesson, the odds were pretty good that your instructor worked for me.

But as the saying goes, “All good things must come to an end.”

In November of 2005 I met my wife Adelie (think: “a daily”) just after she started her first season at Heavenly. An undergrad from Duke who got her Masters in teaching from Rice, Adelie moved to Tahoe to take a break from the high school English classes she had been teaching for the previous seven years.

I guess for me it was the classic case of having been going through life without knowing what I wanted until it was right there in front of me. I proposed to Adelie in July of 2006 while at dinner with her parents and with Lake Tahoe in the back ground. I still fell truly blessed even today that she said “Yes.” We were married on September 30, 2006 in front of our immediate families at Fallen Leaf Lake, one of the smaller mountain lakes which feed into Lake Tahoe.

As the winter drew to a close Adelie and I talked about starting a family. We felt blessed when the doctor told us in May of 2007 we would be expecting our first child in February 2008.

There is a line in one of Kenney Chesney’s song that says: “Here comes life boy ready or not, I wanted it all and that’s what I got…” – I was a bachelor, now I am married with a kid on the way.

As Adelie and I went through the summer getting ready for the arrival of our son, we had some tough choices to make. Due to a misunderstanding at work Adelie lost her job early in the pregnancy and it was becoming evident that the painting business I had started was not going well and something had to change.

It had been our desire since we found out we were expecting to have Adelie be at home with our child. Unfortunately Lake Tahoe is too costly to try and make it with only one wage earner in the family, so placing our faith in God and knowing he would provide us, I started looking for jobs outside of the ski industry and Lake Tahoe.

In October I was made aware of a job working for the Elections Department in Yolo County California. Yolo County is just to the south west of Sacramento and includes the city of Davis, where the University of California Davis is located. It also happens to be where Adelie is from and where her parents still live.

It was as good as we could have expected. Not only was I getting year round, grown up, job with full benefits (something unheard of for a ski bum!), but we were going to be close to Grandma and Grandpa – instant baby sitters!

I finished the last of my painting contracts in early December. Adelie and I packed up and moved down later that month with my new job starting full swing just before Christmas.

I am a member of the Data Services staff within the Elections Department. I am in charge of programming and set up for our electronic voting machines for disabled voters. I am also the inventory control manager for our polling place supplies and storage. For the upcoming Presidential election I will also be in charge of training the 700+ poll workers we will use to man the election.

Shortly after starting my new job I was able to qualify for a first time home buyers program and Adelie and I are currently watching our house being built and hope to move into our new house by September 1.

On February 19, 2008 Adelie and I welcomed Grant Samuel Barry into the world. He was 9 pounds 14.5 ounces and over 22 inches long. Once again we feel truly blessed and are amazed by him every day. I hope one day to bring him “home” to Vermont so he will know the town and people who shaped his father in to the man he is today.

All the best,

Jeffrey

What a great story! Congratulations Jeffrey!! Feel free to leave comments for Jeffrey either here on the class website or email him directly at jeffrey_barry@sbcglobal.net. If you would like to see more photos from Jeffrey’s wedding and family albums, email him for the direct links.

If anyone else would like to contribute to our class web site, please contact Eric at ewingericr@aol.com and we will work together to post the information to this site. This is your web site and is only as good as you make it.

Classmate Update - Peter Testan

WUHS Class of ’87,

After more than 20 years, it is always nice to hear from some of our old friends. Many have appreciated what was shared from Tony and Vicki.

Peter recently contacted me and wanted to share some successes in his life, (Sue and his daughter Emily), along with some current challenges, (being diagnosed with Charcot Marie Tooth Disease).

Hopefully the following article, written by Peter, will help us each to appreciate our own successes and support those who are dealing with “real” challenges.

Thanks for sharing Peter!


Peter writes:

I have always tried to look at things as positively as possible. Rather than looking at what I don't have, I pay attention to what I do have. My almost 5 year old daughter, is the light of my life. My proudest accomplishment.

But this past April, my positive outlook on life, and hope for a healthy and prosperous future for my daughter, Emily, was seriously challenged. I needed a wheelchair to help move me over distances that became too far to walk, painkillers like Morphine to moderate my severe pain, aggressive physical therapy to slow the progression of my disease, and help accepting that the same fate could be in store for my daughter.

I had been out of work trying in vein to rehab from two major ankle surgeries at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, NY, in 2005 and 2006, and to put it simply, was getting nowhere. I was still unable to walk well and my excruciating pain was spreading. My doctors were baffled. Despite all of my hard work in physical therapy, their tests were showing my muscles to be getting weaker. In desperation they sent me to Strong's own rehab clinic, thinking a new approach would get me on the road to recovery and back to work.

I began physical therapy at Strong and within a week they halted therapy, and advised that I see a neurologist before going any further. They believed something was seriously wrong.

I saw the neurologist the following week. He took pins and inserted them into my ankles and feet The pins were an inch into my muscles and I could not feel them. He then ran electricity into my lower legs, and got little response. He knew there was a big problem and immediately diagnosed me with Peripheral Neuropathy.

Peripheral Neuropathy is caused by damage to nerves running from the spine to the arms and legs causing severe chronic pain and numbness. He thought a pinched nerve in my spine, he was seeing in an MRI, was the culprit. He sent me to a surgeon so that pressure could be taken off the nerves in question to relieve my symptoms.

As each week passed leading up to my appointment with the surgeon, the numbness in my legs was getting worse. I was also experiencing excruciating pain in my legs. I would lay in bed and feel like my legs were on fire.

The pain got so bad, I was prescribed morphine, which turned me into a zombie sleeping fourteen hours a day. Though I was miserable, I eagerly awaited my appointment with the surgeon, thinking the surgery I was being promised, would solve the whole problem

The day of the appointment with the surgeon came. I went armed with the latest MRI of my spine, supposedly showing the pinched nerve causing my decline. He spent two minutes talking with me after seeing my MRI and watched me stumble up the hallway in front of his office. He agreed I had a major problem, but felt I did not have a pinched nerve in my back. He then sent me back to my neurologist where I had started. I saw my neurologist a few days later, and believe it or not, was sent right back to the surgeon.

With me increasingly depending on a wheelchair, my Significant other, Sue, and I were completely frustrated. We saw my general practitioner in desperation, hoping for some direction. She helped us get an appointment with the Neuromuscular Center at Strong in hopes they could help me. She also said something called Charcot Marie Tooth disease could be the true cause of my problems.

Charcot Marie Tooth disease, is a Hereditary Neuropathy impacting 1 in 2,500 people in the US. The disease leads to increasing disability from severe pain along with worsening muscle weakness in the feet, legs and arms, and hands.

After a full day at Strong with the doctors at The Neuromuscular Center discussing family history, my symptoms, and additional nerve and muscular testing I was indeed diagnosed Charcot Marie Tooth Disease.

As I sat in a wheelchair hearing the diagnosis, my mind was overwhelmed with what the diagnosis could mean. A disorder with no known cure progressing further and further, worsening pain, muscle atrophy, and the unthinkable possibility that I could have passed it on to my daughter, Emily.

I wondered who might have passed the disease to me, and who else in my family might silently be dealing with its symptoms. My aunt has been battling chronic pain and fatigue for years, with at least one of her adult children seeing similar symptoms. And I remember my deceased grandfather having similar issue.

Emily, appears normal on the surface. But shows some unsettling tendencies toward having the disease including, tripping over her large feet and numbness in some parts of her body.

To learn more about my daughter's status with Charcot Marie Tooth, I will undergo genetic testing to determine if my CMT is genetically recessive or dominant. If it is dominate, I likely passed the disease onto Emily and having more children is very risky. The testing will also identify which type of the disease I have. We are battling my insurance company to get the testing paid for. The testing is extremely costly and difficult to get covered.

I have just started a new round of physical therapy to help my pain and slow the damage being done to my body. The therapy is waterbased, and has begun to help. I will have to be in physical therapy for the rest of my life.

With Sue's help, I am still able to enjoy my favorite hobby of gardening. I can do some weeding and planting. She handles the heavier work. For now, that seems to be the story of our relationship in the wake of my diagnosis. Sue increasingly does more and more out of necessity. I need Sue's help with dressing and I am clumsy and fall over on a regular basis.

Because I am on Morphine, Sue has to drive me everywhere. She is a real trooper and we love each other very much. But, there has been a strain on our relationship. Especially when you consider the impact the disease could have on any children we might have.

I am hopeful I will eventually be able to return to work. My actual prognosis is unknown at this point. Until we pinpoint the exact type of CMT I have through genetic testing, it will be hard for my life to move forward. I know the disease will not kill me, but knowing how debilitating the disease can be, without knowing more about where my case is going to end up, is scary to say the least. I cannot imagine living with this level of pain forever. Though Morphine dulls the pain, I regularly feel like my lower legs and feet are on fire. And the pain is spreading to my arms and fingers now.

There is progress being made in research on CMT, and the hope for my daughter Emily is that that there will be a cure before she faces the painful effects of the disease.

My years of radio, television, and sales experience are helping me educate people about Charcot Marie Tooth Disease. Though I was unsure about speaking out about my diagnosis at first, I was convinced that I could help people by telling my story.

Spending time with Emily and Sue allows me to forget my pain, focus on the good things in life, and forget about the uncertainty ahead.

Wow! Thanks again Peter for sharing. Feel free to leave comments for Peter either here on the class website or email him directly at petertestan@gmail.com

If anyone else has anything that they would like to share, (the birth of a child, big promotion at work, your 4th marriage, etc.), please contact Eric at ewingericr@aol.com and we will work together to post the information to this site.