Ron Adkins estimates that he’s walked enough miles in the five years since his heart transplant to have reached San Diego by now. A Seattle resident for 35 years, the 57-year old father of two plans to walk enough more miles in his lifetime to make it back home.
“Or maybe to Miami,” he laughs. “Who knows?”
Raised on a farm in Missouri, Adkins and his wife Ann made Seattle their permanent home after they met in California on the tail end of Ron’s military service.
“I’ve always been physically active, though I never competed (in races) until recently,” he recalls, although a strong family history of heart disease predisposed him toward the cardiomyopathy he eventually developed.
After several heart attacks, he went on the waiting list for a heart donor in 2001.
Call it luck or the power of positive thinking, Adkins’ wait was relatively short, and when he received his heart, it was a perfect match. In fact, his donor had been training for the Seattle Marathon when he was swiped by a car mirror on a foggy Bellingham night and killed.
“I had no problems afterwards, no rejection, nothing,” he says. “It really is a miracle that I’m here.”
The transplant went so well that within months the patient was back on his feet and looking to put them to good use. Adkins and his family decided that while walking the Seattle Half Marathon might be too much too soon, he would begin training for the upcoming Capitol City Walk in Olympia.
In the last five years, Adkins has walked both races every year and joined up with other transplant survivors through Team Transplant.
Founded in 2001 by the University of Washington Medical Center dietician Alysun Deckert, Team Transplant has grown from 35 members to nearly 200 since its inception. Her primary focus at the hospital is meeting the nutritional needs of organ transplant recipients,
but her goal with Team Transplant is to show first-hand that transplant recipients can – and do – lead active, healthy lives.
“All the credit should go to Alysun,” Ron says of his friend and coach, who is a past Olympic time trials qualifier and Boston and Seattle Marathon finisher. To promote organ donation awareness, the group participates in both the Capitol City and the Seattle Marathon Half Walks yearly and trains together once a week in addition to their individual training schedules.
Adkins’ involvement with the team has been fulfilling in other ways, too. Volunteering two years ago at an organ transplant awareness walk, Adkins struck up a conversation with a woman browsing his booth.
Her late husband had been a donor, she told him. Ron quickly realized that he was speaking to the wife of the man whose heart he had received. He introduced himself and within moments the two were hugging and crying in what would become a very emotional afternoon for both families.
“We had only exchanged one letter right after the transplant,” Adkins remembers, “so I think it was good closure for all of us, especially her daughter.”
Between his time volunteering for the YMCA Campfire program, the University of Washington Living Legacy Foundation, and his multi-faceted job at the Post Office, Adkins takes time out to listen. As part of his healing process, and now an ongoing part of his training routine, Adkins uses his walks through the city to relieve stress.
“I don’t listen to any music, I just open my eyes and ears,” he says thoughtfully. “I’ve seen things walking in this city that I never saw in 35 years by car.”(Adkins will join approximately 12,000 other runners and walkers in this year’s University of Washington Medical Center Seattle Marathon Nov. 26 which will benefit the Living Legacy Foundation, a non-profit organization created to educate the Northwest community about organ and tissue donation.
To register for any of the marathon events, or to volunteer at any event, contact the Seattle Marathon Association at (206) 729-3660 or visit the website at www.seattlemarathon.org)
Seattle Marathon Nuts & Bolts
What:
37th annual UW Medical Center Seattle Marathon
When:
Health Expo Nov. 24-25, Kids Marathon Nov. 25,
Race/Walk Nov. 26
Where:
Expo is at the Seattle Weston Hotel, Kids Marathon and adult race begin in front of the Seattle Center on Fifth Avenue.
Times:
Expo is noon-8 p.m. Friday; 11 a.m. – 7 p.m.
(Registration goes until 8 p.m.) Saturday; Kids race starts at 10 a.m.; Adult race starts with Marathon Walk 7:15 a.m., Half Marathon Run 7:30 a.m.; Half Marathon Walk 7:45 a.m.; Marathon Run 8:15 a.m. Wheelchair events start five minutes before the running events.
Info:
(206) 729-3660 or www.seattlemarathon.org.
— Anne Scalamonti is a freelance writer living in Portland. |
