Determination, Dedication Fuel Clinician’s Team USA Dream

Four years ago, Jeremy Van Tress was lying in a hospital bed at his Corvallis home — breathing on a ventilator — watching the 2020 Paralympics from Tokyo on television.

Seeing the hand cyclists compete for gold spurred something in Van Tress. By the end of the competition, he became determined to start training for the 2024 Paralympics in Paris.

This decision took grit since he had been ventilated, lying in a hospital bed, for nearly three years due to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS.

But that day in the summer of 2021 (the 2020 Paralympics had been delayed for a year due to COVID-19), the former collegiate cross-country runner’s competitive spirit ignited. Van Tress’s intense determination and dedication changed his destiny.

Just three and a half years later, Van Tress, a licensed clinical social worker for Samaritan Health Services, rolled his wheelchair onto the victory stand in Adelaide, Australia, with two World Cup silver medals around his neck.

The life-changing process started in his hospital bed. The first step was seeing how long he could remain off his ventilator. It started with a half hour, then 45 minutes and then an hour.

“I did this all on my own, without any clinician supervision,” said Van Tress. “I was a bad patient.”

Van Tress and his wife, Courtney, have six children. His next goal was to get out of bed and spend time with his family. Sitting in a recliner, Van Tress put together puzzles with his children. By then, he was off his ventilator for three
hours at a time.

His next step was to see if he still had mobility in his upper body. Van Tress bought a tabletop handcycle and began working out.

Van Tress was no stranger to hard work. He had joined the Army more than a decade earlier, serving six years on active duty and three as a reservist. His veteran status helped him get his first entry level competitive handcycle through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

During his time in the reserves, he began to notice mild signs of hand weakness.

“I started to have a hard time opening jars,” said Van Tress. “Then I noticed I was having issues running. I was uncoordinated. I started to fall.”

Military veterans are twice as likely to get diagnosed with ALS, according to a study by the National Institutes of Health.

Van Tress is employed at Samaritan’s Palliative Care offices in Albany and Lebanon and patients sometimes ask him about his experiences.

“If requested, I can be a resource for them in that way,” said Van Tress. “I find that I have an ability to empathize.”

During the three years Van Tress was bedbound, he earned a doctorate in social work from Walden University.

“I wanted to find a way to keep my brain sharp,” he said. “I wanted something to challenge myself.”

His dissertation was on ALS patients’ socioecological resilience, self-determination and decision-making.

“That aligns with what I do for patients at work,” he said.

Van Tress will be back on the World Cup circuit racing twice in May, once in Belgium and then in Italy. If he does make the 2024 Paralympic team, he will be back in Europe to compete in the World Championships held this year in Zurich, Switzerland.

Once the World Cup season winds down, Van Tress will set his sights on a spot on the U.S. Paralympics hand-cycling team to represent the U.S. this summer in Paris — less than four years after he watched the same competition from his hospital bed.