Background:

Growing up, James was always athletic, excelling in everything he gave his energy to. Baseball & martial arts were his primary outlets until as a young adult, he joined the Army. During his time in service, James stuck to his competitive mindset, working hard to maximize every opportunity. James spent time as a paratrooper attached to a special operations unit where he would go on to win soldier of the year in 2019. During his time competing for solider of the year, James found triathlon as a method of staying fit. What just started as a hobby grew into a full time passion. James would not reenlist due to this passion and new pursuit of wanting to become a professional triathlete. He would find immediate success, winning multiple events and blossoming into a high level triathlete, on the verge of major breakthrough towards his goals. Swim bike run was James’s life, his therapy, and something he could be “addicted” to and be healthy. He also used this outlet as helpful knowledge/first hand experience to get him through undergrad for exercise and sports science. But after numerous orthopedic surgeries and chronic pain, something else happened that would put a halt to this pursuit. Something that was being overlooked as strictly musculoskeletal and could be fixed with proper training and therapy.

Syringomyelia Diagnosis:

James had always dealt with what seemed like muscle imbalance which created issues with gait, ultimately resulting in chronic pain. This chronic pain would only be relieved usually for a few days after manual therapy, yet no specific corrective exercises seemed to be working. James had spent years seeing numerous specialists, getting different opinions and surgeries - ultimately, with no true lasting positive result. In July of 2025, James was beginning his training camp for Ironman Florida where he wanted to qualify for the Ironman World Championship. James started to have severe nightly episodes that turned into full day episodes of chronic itching. No rash, no visible symptoms at all on the skin, no medication working, and after consulting with numerous specialists, its was concluded that it wasn’t a dermatologic issue. Something else was happening, something more, something unknown to the average clinician. Then it happened. In late August, James woke up to complete paralysis from the neck down. He had lost bladder control and had urinated on himself. His partner and now co-founder of SAAC, Megan, rushed to the neighbors to get help for James who was in and out on consciousness. Once transported to the ER, James underwent extensive testing and imaging. Brain, cervical & chest scans were done, to include blood. All tests came back normal. It was eighteen hours of the paralysis before James regained feeling/function. Numerous specialists, including neurosurgery, all dismissed the episode as incidental and possibly even related to mental health. This would be the first of many dismissive responses to symptoms as psychiatric-related. A few weeks would pass, symptoms would progress and get worse: tremors, heart palpations, chest tightness, chronic itching, joint pain/instability, lack of sleep, fragile skin, brain fog, headaches, and many more… until another morning came in late October where James would wake to being unable to go to the bathroom despite feeling a full bladder. His balance was also off. He was rushed to the ER again. This time, after weeks of getting numerous blood tests, images, a lumbar puncture, and routinely being told it’s psychiatric, they would order the last imaging not done, a thoracic spine MRI. This MRI would go on to show James having a syrinx, otherwise known as syringomyelia, from T4 to T11 in his spine. The resident neurosurgeon would come back to tell James after the finding that the syrinx cannot create these kind of symptoms, and that he should up his dose of anxiety medication. See the pattern here? James refused to believe this was the case, One could see how anyone else going through such events, being basically told it’s “all in your head” even after imaging finds something, this could be mentally traumatic. James joined support groups on Facebook, and turned his love for research in exercise and sports science, to research of syringomyelia. The findings shocked him and the stories frustrated him. This was a community in clear need. A few weeks later at a headache specialist appointment, James met with a provider who finally recognized his diagnosis as significant and most certainly a likely cause for his symptoms. He conducted a neurological examination where James’s right foot was positive for what is called a “Babinski”. This is a reflex common in spinal cord injury patients and everyone has until about two years of age, but should go away. This was another clear sign that James’s syrinx was having a downstream effect. This is a very summarized version of the whole story believe it or not. Syringomyelia has had a stranglehold on James’s life and has the same on so many others with very similar stories. James recognized this and decided that if his original dreams and goals were going to be taken away, he was going to apply all that passion into ensuring no one else has to go through this same story again.

why he started saac:

James is an intense competitive athlete at heart. Being thorough, disciplined, passionate and always searching for that “1% better”. When James started and continued to experience the lack of action by doctors - to the extent that could be classified as criminally negligent - he realized that someone had to take a stand and allow voices to truly be heard. With James’s background in research within exercise and sports science, and his partner’s training in medical school, he knew that he had the capabilities to lay the framework for a new organization that would change the way the medical industry treats syringomyelia, as well as other rare conditions that are being overlooked and dismissed. One of the things James and all service members are taught in the military is integrity. In such an important life category as healthcare, integrity matters. The lack of integrity that some providers have when, instead of letting the patient know that they simply don’t have an answer, they tell them they are mentally defective. It is criminal. At SAAC, we’d much rather a provider say they don’t know and ideally point the patient in the direction of someone who may know more. Between this narrative of lack of transparency, and the very limited methods to the treatment of syringomyelia, James had enough to know that he needed to pursue this new goal with the same fire and passion that drove him while in sport.

You can be assured that your support of SAAC will go towards the mission of holding providers more accountable, advancing the research that’s simply not being done, and creating a new powerful voice for the patient. This is why our slogan at SAAC is “I am Heard” - because you are, and will continue to be heard.

Quick additional facts:

James has twin six year old daughters, Aubri & Preston, who are his world. Another reason why he started SAAC is to show them that you can truly make lemonade out of lemons in life with the right amount of perseverance and passion.