Makes a case for perseverance

Date: 18-09-2003 Posted by: Anabolic Info TeamUnited States

She remembers waking from a coma in a Fresno hospital bed, a doctor with a waist-length ponytail asleep in a chair nearby. She couldn't feel a thing from the neck down, couldn't move her arms or legs, couldn't wiggle her fingers or toes.

Then, the diagnosis: encephalitis, a rare complication of the German measles she'd contracted a month earlier, had left her paralyzed from the waist down; she'd probably never walk again.

It was June 1971, and with those words life changed forever for this 17-year-old gymnast and artist. But this girl, who 30 days earlier was pronounced clinically dead after her heart stopped beating, who when it began pumping again 20 minutes later slipped into a coma, had a streak in her as stubborn as her fiery red hair.

"My thought was, 'This is OK for now. But don't mess me up too much, I have other things to do.' I thought, 'You're wrong. I am going to walk again.' "

She was right.

These days, at 49 years old, Mary Case is walking. She also happens to be an accomplished bodybuilder and powerlifter and a certified personal trainer who makes a living running a printing business and serving criminal subpoenas.

Never say never to Mary Case.

"She's very persistent," says her husband of three years, David Case, 53, a detective with the Fresno Police Department who lifts weights four afternoons a week with his wife at central Fresno's Gold's Gym. "She has told me many times she doesn't consider 'don't' a word in her dictionary. She won't accept defeat."

If anyone has had cause to give up, it's Mary Case.

First, the German measles, which came just a week before the end of her junior year at northeast Fresno's Hoover High School. After waking from the coma, Case spent two-and-a-half years in a wheelchair and underwent intensive physical therapy, including weightlifting at the gym.

She grew stronger. Feeling began to return in her fingers and toes. She began moving her legs. And one day in early 1974, Case triumphantly walked into the doctor's office pushing her wheelchair.

"It was a feeling of, 'Yes! Yes!,' " recalls Case, who used a walker and a cane for awhile before throwing both away.

Then, 10 years later, Case began being plagued by muscle weakness, chronic pain and loss of balance. The diagnosis from doctors at Stanford University Medical Center: multiple sclerosis. It was 1984, and Case was 30 years old. She'd just opened her own printing business two years earlier.

She bought a new cane. Took the muscle relaxant pills doctors prescribed. But a month later, fed up with an inability to work or drive because of the extreme drowsiness the pills caused, Case tossed them in the trash and returned to the gym to lift weights.

"I got angry," says Case, a northwest Fresno resident who holds bachelor's and master's degrees from Fresno State in civil engineering and humanities. "It was, 'I have to remain independent. At least if I fall, I am going to get myself strong enough so I can pick myself back up.' "

But Case's troubles were far from over.

In 1994, on the way home one August evening in her Camaro Z-28 sports car after working out at Gold's, a drunken driver zoomed through a stop sign in rural Fresno County at Dickenson and Belmont avenues, broadsiding Case's car and sending it spinning underneath a big rig, which dragged it for 52 feet. Case sustained a broken nose and jaw and required 50 stitches to close a gash in her head.

Then came the breast cancer. That was in January 2001. Case underwent 48 radiation treatments, a double mastectomy and reconstructive surgery -- all while training for the National Physique Committee's California State Bodybuilding Championships where, that May, she placed third in the women's master's division. She also finished third in 2002. This year Case, who began bodybuilding in 1997, placed second.

"She has accomplished so much, it just amazes me," David Case says. "At her bodybuilding shows, I'm busting with pride watching her on stage."

Mary Case will compete next spring in another bodybuilding show. She currently is preparing for a powerlifting competition in December in Fresno. Case began powerlifting in 1995 and has competed once, winning her class that first year in the bench press.

"I do this to grasp at trying to make myself healthy, and even if I'm not healthy then to make myself look healthy because I don't want people to feel sorry for me," Case says.

She does look healthy.

At 5 feet, 31/2 inches tall and 138 pounds, Case is compact and solid. Thick ridges of muscles line her thighs, shoulders and back. Biceps bulge with the slightest movement.

Look closely, however, and sometimes you will see the tremors in her legs and arms -- painful muscle spasms that strike without warning. There are other, less noticeable, effects of the multiple sclerosis. Case lacks a lot of sensation below the neck, especially in her legs and feet, and suffers from vertigo; she compensates with sight, always making sure she carefully watches where she places her feet. She is sensitive to heat and cold. Muscle fatigue and chronic pain are her constant companions -- David often hears her wandering the house in the wee hours of the morning.

Sometimes, it's all Case can do to walk into Gold's.

"When I get out of the car I can feel really bad from the chronic pain," Case says. "But when I leave here, I don't have any problems. The more that I hurt, the harder I push myself. If I'm going to hurt, I'm going to be strong hurting."

She is strong.

Case's best bench press is 260 pounds; two weeks ago she lifted 185 -- eight times. She grabs a pair of massive 45-pound dumbbells in each hand for shoulder presses. On the leg-press machine she repeatedly pushes 1,000 pounds with ease and, as she says, "that's real low and real slow."

Her weightlifting partners, which include David and fellow Fresno Police Department Detective Paul Preston, are constantly awed at how hard Case works out. The three train together four afternoons a week at Gold's for close to 90 minutes.

"She's competitive," says Preston, 43, a Clovis resident and competitive bodybuilder. "When she gets focused on something, she's got the tunnel vision. Her drive keeps me going. She'll kick you in the ass and keep you moving.

"When the rest of us want to crap out and go home and crack open a beer and turn on the TV, it doesn't happen with her."

No, she'll push even harder.

Case is not one to wallow in self-pity. The tears don't well up in her blue eyes when she talks of her troubles; they do threaten to spill, however, when she speaks of the mother, the father, the two sisters and the brother she lost to cancer -- both parents and three of five siblings gone in a span of five years.

She tries to use what she has seen, what she has learned, to help others.

Case always finds time to stop and chat when people approach her at the gym. If Case happens to be sitting alone at a table at Gold's, it's not for long. People are drawn to her like a magnet, drawn to this youthful-looking, full-blooded Cherokee whose smile crinkles the corners of her eyes, who says some of her favorite things in life are cooking, baking, drawing, painting and sculpting. Oh, and her animals -- she has three dogs, a cat and one very squawky parakeet.

"She's a very giving person," David Case says. "She likes to help people who have problems because she has problems."

One of those people is Madera resident Becki Boston, 47, one of three clients Case trains at Gold's. Boston, diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1999 and forced to give up her job as well as her hobby of showing horses, has been training with Case for 18 months.

"I'm definitely a lot stronger," says Boston, a slim 5 feet, 5 inches tall and 112 pounds, "and because we're doing resistance training, I've got denser bones so if I happen to fall because of my [multiple sclerosis] I don't break."

Then, Boston pauses and, with a wide smile, flexes her right bicep.

"I've worked hard for this and I'm proud of it," she says. "Coming here benefits my self-esteem. It's nice to see progress. I like the way I look."

For Case, the greatest joy comes on those days when Boston looks into the large wall mirrors in the weight room at Gold's and sees the muscles popping out in her thin arms.

"It's important that I can help somebody," Case says. "To me, that's what makes the world go 'round. That's the victory. That's the cream on the cake right there."

Still, Case often wonders, how can she give more? There has to be a reason, she says, for why she came out of the coma, why she survived the car accident and the breast cancer, why she has this battle still to fight with multiple sclerosis.

"My thought is, 'Why is it I'm still here?' " Case says. "I wish someone would explain that to me. If I could figure out why I'm still here, maybe I could make better use of my time and help people."

There is no anger in her voice when she wonders about her problems, no regret, no sorrow, no bitterness. Instead, Case looks to the future, to dreams of learning how to golf and trap and skeet shoot, to her yearly tradition of making huge batches of Christmas cookies and candies.

"I like for people to see that if you have a disability you can make the most of it," she says. "I can't do gymnastics anymore, but I'm not going to dwell on what I can't do but instead on what I can do."