Athlete keeps pushing himself

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This article was published 23/02/2015 (4102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Arthritis is a tenacious adversary, but Russell Listmayer isn’t backing down.

The 13-year-old Edmund Partridge Community School student is one of six young Manitobans taking part in the Faces of Childhood Arthritis Luncheon, presented by The Arthritis Society, Manitoba and Nunavut Division on Fri., March 13 at The Fairmont Winnipeg from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Listmayer has juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. In Listmayer, the autoimmune disorder causes uveitis, an inflammation of the middle layer of the eye. Since being diagnosed with arthritis at age five, Listmayer has undergone 11 eye surgeries (cataracts, glaucoma and retina detachments) and is scheduled for surgery number 12 in April.

Listmayer also uses five types of eye drops five times a day to prevent blindness and every Thursday he gets a needle of methotrexate, a chemotherapeutic drug that reduces the activity of the immune system, which leaves him drowsy with a metallic taste in his mouth.

None of this stops Listmayer. An active kid, the Riverbend resident plays left wing for the Maples Monarchs minor bantam hockey team.

“Just seeing all my friends do it (playing sports), and just wanting to be like my friends,” said Listmayer of what drives him.

“I usually do workouts at home to be able to keep up.”

“He just pushes himself,” said Brandeis Orr-Smallwood, Listmayer’s mother. “He has to work twice as hard to do the normal amount. You can tell when he’s skating really hard that his tank might not be as full but he just doesn’t give up. I’m very proud of him.”

Unfortunately, Listmayer’s upcoming surgery will keep him off the ball diamond this spring.

“That will take me out of baseball, so I’m going to play football this year,” Listmayer said.

When asked if he’s worried about another detached retina, which has happened to him twice playing sports, Listmayer responds with a quick “No.”

“It’s his mom that does all the worrying,” added Orr-Smallwood with a laugh.

March is Childhood Arthritis Month. According to the Arthritis Society’s website, over 60,000 young Canadians battle the chronic pain of arthritis. Despite that figure, Tanya Misseghers, community engagement and marketing co-ordinator at The Arthritis Society, Manitoba and Nunavut Division, said the public’s perception is that arthritis is a disease that only affects the elderly.

“If you think of arthritis, you probably think of the bone-on-bone, wear and tear kind, osteoarthritis. The kind that kids get is completely different. It’s an autoimmune disease,” Misseghers said.

“It takes a huge toll on their bodies and there is no cure. Some kids are fortunate to go into remission for a few years but it can flare back up. That’s what happened with Colin (Johnson, one of the Faces of Childhood Arthritis). All it takes is a bad flu, a stressful event, or it could even be hitting puberty that triggers a flare and the arthritis comes raging back.”

Listmayer chooses to rage against the disease. For the last two years, he has been an ambassador for the Walk to Fight Arthritis at Assiniboine Park in June and is the top fundraiser two years running, raising almost $10,000 for The Arthritis Society.

Listmayer has a lot fight in him, a trait that runs in the family. His uncle Colton Orr currently plays for the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League, but is best known as an enforcer for the Toronto Maple Leafs, putting up 1,186 penalty minutes in 476 National Hockey League games.

Listmayer’s older brother Kruz, 17, is a gritty defenceman with the Neepawa Natives of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League and a draft pick of the Swift Current Broncos of the Western Hockey League.

As for her son’s style of play, Orr-Smallwood says he is the under your skin type.

“Russell is like a Sean Avery (former NHLer). He’s a little antagonist out there. He likes to stand in front of the net and take it. No one else will, but he’ll put his body on the line,” she said.

But does he face the goalie and wave his stick in front the tender’s mask, a la Avery on Martin Brodeur in the 2008 NHL playoffs? That unique infraction ended up being added to the NHL rulebook as “the Avery Rule.”

“Not yet. I’ve been told to though,” Listmayer said.

They might be rewriting the Hockey Manitoba rulebook soon.

Tickets to the March 13 luncheon are $75 at www.arthritis.ca/faces or by calling 204-942-4892.