COLORADO KID: Ryan, brother Eric and Dad, Jon Sr., skiing (Above, left); Fullmer family of Gunnison, Colorado, 1988; (upper left to right) Robert, Jon Sr, Patricia, John Paul (lower left to right) Ryan and Eric.

quit, so I kept playing the game. The headache then started to become more intense. Was it something I ate? I wondered. 'Chris, help me get up,' I gasped out to my friend. The headache had become almost unbearable. Try as I might, I could not stand up. Why won't my arm work? I thought."

Ryan Fullmer’s recollection over thirty years ago becomes real as he recalls his first “brain attack.” The next few days were a blur, filled with the whirling activity of multiple doctor visits and excessive sleeping. Physically, Ryan struggled with the simplest movements as he tried to stand up, fell over, and tried to stand up again. “I was not able to walk. My left arm was unusable.”

Healthcare in Gunnison, Colorado, in 1983, was adequate but had not seen specialization care yet. Although the ER doctor in Gunnison didn’t know precisely what was causing Ryan’s condition, he sent him home with instructions for his mother to “Give him aspirin, and he’ll be fine.” Ryan’s mother was not satisfied with the doctor’s inability to figure out what was wrong, so she took Ryan back to the emergency room after a few days. During this second visit, they diagnosed Ryan with brain cancer. “Not the kind of news a parent wants to hear about their young child,” Ryan reminisces.

The hospital policy required that patients like Ryan be airlift

airlifted to a more specialized facility. That facility was in Grand Junction, Colorado, and a raging blizzard was in progress. Ryan was hastily taken by ambulance to Montrose, Colorado, just south of Grand Junction, and then airlifted to Saint Mary’s in Grand Junction. During this time, Ryan lapsed in and out of consciousness. After a series of CAT scans, it was ultimately determined that little Ryan Fullmer had suffered a massive ischemic right hemisphere stroke. An ischemic stroke, or “brain attack,” is caused by a blood clot that interrupts the blood flow to the brain. In Ryan’s case, he had lost the whole left side of his body.

Those years were filled with tests, inpatient stays, physical therapy, and medical evaluation. "I became a guinea pig in a lab. I would hear, 'An eight-year-old shouldn't have a stroke.'"

The next few years were filled with tests, inpatient stays, physical therapy, and medical evaluation. “I became a guinea pig in a lab. Often I would hear, “An eight-year-old shouldn’t have a stroke. That is an old-person injury.’” Ryan was destined for many challenges during his childhood. Slowly, Ryan began to walk again but had not regained the full use of his left arm by the time he was ten years old. “It was a tough time for me.”

Ryan continued going to physical therapy. He recounts those days, "My parents kept pushing me to do physical therapy. But, of course, I still went to school every day. They never treated me like I was defective or different from the other kids. When