Felsenfeld says Jack doesn’t have a fair shake. Jack, who is still in diapers and does not talk, receives in-home therapy six days a week. When Felsenfeld runs he thinks of his son.
On Sunday, he was in Moblie, Ala., running the Firstlight Bank Marathon and thoughts of Jack helped ease the pain. There was plenty of ache. He had just ran the Mississippi Blues Marathon in Jackson Saturday. But he kept thinking of his son.
Through work for his charity, Felsenfeld met someone who offered Jack hyberbaric chamber therapy, which has been known to be helpful for autistic children.
“If I have to run myself into the ground to get that for him, then it’s all worth it,” said Felsenfeld, now an independent website developer living in Lake Forest. “Everything else that comes is gravy.
“I was thinking about it in Mobile. I was thinking about the pain was earning him that. It’s totally worth it.”
Back when he worked at OCC, from 1999 to 2002, Felsenfeld had a different lifestyle than that of a runner. Sure he now indulges with meals at In-N-Out and late-night ice-cream runs, but back then it was the norm and there wasn’t any form of exercise taking place either.
A little more than five years ago, Felsenfeld hit a low point. It seemed the only thing high in his life was his cholesterol level, over 300. Also, all his beer-drinking days from college and even after caught up to him.
His liver suffered mostly.
A doctor asked him in 2003 if he had been drinking alcohol on the way to the examination because he had never seen results so horrible.
Felsenfeld was overweight too. His wife, Tiffany, worried for Felsenfeld. She bought her college sweetheart an iPod and he started to use it on early-morning walks around the neighborhood.
