Wade Schmidt

Hanover Park High School

Class of 1981

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Wade Schmidt - Class of 1981 - Hanover Park High School

First Name	Wade
Last Name	Schmidt
Graduation Year	Class of 1981
Gender	Male
City	N/A
State/Province	TN
Country	United States
Occupation	Disabled
Married	No
Favorite School Memory	Doing the Sr Yearbook
About Me	Gosh - lets see. Tried school at Tampa, but ended up in West Virginia at WVU in Morgantown. Great time. From there I went home to Ft Lauderdale and started a career in lending and stayed in it. Worked for Nat'l Savings Banks for the most part and managed Districts from NH to Boston, Conn NYC and on down to DC. Ended up in Wilmington NC owning my own business for a while. Ya see - when I was 27 I fond out that I had a Genetic Bone Disease. Basically I had crappy bones similar at that time to that of an 85 year old man. When I first learned of all that there was nothing they could do to help me cause most of my issues were in my spine. At 33 they started to offer some surgical interventions. From then until I was about 40 I had gobs of surgery - lots just trying to keep ahead of things so I could continue to walk around etc. By 40 I ended up in Spinal Failure. Being that I stayed just ahead of the curve of what medicine offered I then had the top half of my spine remodeled. They used bone grafts, rods, plates, screws etc as well as dissected out the bad bone scrapping the canal and so forth as well as removing the outside portion of my spinal canal exposing the cord on one side to decompress it. The failure did a good clip of nerve damage leaving me with a good bit of pain on a daily basis. The up side to it all is that I am still walking, around the house for the most part. Long periods don't work, but I do get around which I am extremely grateful for. It was touch and go for quite a while there. My care at Vanderbilt has been GREAT. They are wonderful. They should put a room with my name on it by now - lol. This is the first full year that I haven't been in there - yey!!! Actually - they have reached their limits at this point. I am just managing the daily pain which along without working any longer is my my biggest deal. It sucks at times and at others it really sucks, but as I said I am grateful for where they have gotten me to. Could be much worse and it isn't a death sentence any longer. I was in organ failure for a while when my spine failed cause the messages weren't getting through to the organs in my body which presented a bit of an issue. All that is behind me now and with my spinal cord decompressed that will never happen any longer. I have to be careful not to fall or take any impact from behind, but that's not a problem and I don't even think about it. Disability is awful though. I hate it. I feel worthless, but my pain prohibits me from taking any type of work. I only get about an hour and a half or so a day out of my body til I gotta lay down for the rest. I manage though. Fortunately I made enough money while I worked that my disability check is a decent size. I'm hardly living high in the hog, but I can get by. My cheek and jaw have been my most recent challenge, but they have had work and are holding for now. Still having issues with my jaw which has been effecting my teeth which has been a very very sad deal. Its amazing how emotional you can get over your teeth. I'm still dealing with all that. I plan on holding out as long as I can and so far so good but not for long I'm afraid. Well that's that for me and what I have been up to. Geez - looking back at all this I wrote is crazy. It's been ...(read more)