Man with debilitating disease motivates Lynn students

LYNN – A special guest at Shoemaker Elementary School Monday circled students while on his bike. He matched students push-up for push-up, then did a push-up with a teacher on his back.Then Patrick Cogan got back into his wheelchair and told students to never give up.”When I was in high school, I was in a wheelchair … and people made fun of me,” Cogan said. “If you want to do something, don’t let other people be the reason you don’t do it.”Cogan, 30, visited the fifth grade at Shoemaker Monday to tell students about his life as an athlete and co-founder of the nonprofit Project Wheels after being diagnosed with a debilitating and degenerative neuromuscular disease called Friedreich’s ataxia. Similar to Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease, Cogan described Friedreich’s ataxia simply.”My brain doesn’t communicate well with my body,” he told students.Cogan described his life with the disease as complicated. He told students how he drinks with a straw, but “sometimes the straw ends up in my ear.” He discussed how he has trouble standing up and walking in a straight line without falling over.This lack of coordination was particularly problematic for him when he was growing up in Lynn and wanted to play sports.”I never made any teams growing up, but would play with friends and siblings,” Cogan said, noting that his layups seldom went through the hoop. Plus, he admitted that he was afraid that people would make fun of him.That changed when he was diagnosed with Friedreich’s ataxia while in his 20s.”It really upset me and I really wanted to do something,” Cogan explained. So he found a coach who would help him learn to ride a recumbent bike. They rode 100 miles to raise money to benefit fellow patients with Friedreich’s ataxia, co-founding Project Wheels.”After that I wanted to do more,” Cogan told the students. “I wanted to push myself, not hurt myself, but I wanted to do more.”So he began training for a triathlon. Except he had to learn how to swim at age 27, and he has to swim on his back.”My brain doesn’t communicate well with my lungs and if I swam on my tummy I wouldn’t be able to breathe,” Cogan told the students. “And breathing is important.”Cogan has had to make a few adjustments – he swims tethered to a coach, he runs in a wheelchair and he has a low profile on his bike. Yet, with students gathered in the gym, Cogan demonstrated that he could still do plenty of push-ups. And he literally rode circles around the students.”Do they have that kind of bike for kids?” student Arthur Kirk asked.The emotional and personal lessons Cogan learned are just as important as the physical skills he has mastered.”He was motivational when he talked about kids and said that if they think they can’t do something and quit, they might think they can’t do something ever,” said student Ryan Fraher.Fifth grade teacher Carrie Nicosia said that was the message she hoped students would learn, although some students might also remember Cogan doing pushups with Nicosia on his back.”He is a major motivation for me,” Nicosia told the students. “He’s a reminder to never, ever give up and work hard.”