Four years after losing his ability to walk, Mike Shoreman is attempting to cross all five Great Lakes on a paddleboard in an effort to raise money for youth mental health.
âI realized very quickly I didn't want kids to feel the way I felt, which was alone, and scared,â said Shoreman, who in 2018 was diagnosed with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which can occur when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near one of your ears.
Shoreman says his first symptom was a painful earache, but things quickly deteriorated.
âVision impairment, the nerves in my face shattered and collapsed,â he recalls. âAnd then I woke up one morning and I couldn't walk anymore.â
Ramsay Hunt is the same syndrome with. In Shoremanâs case, it wasnât caught quickly enough and his vision, speech and mobility are all severely impacted.
âI was a paddleboarding coach here in Toronto,â Shoreman says. âAnd overnight I lost my business, my independence and my social life. I ended up having a mental health breakdown.â
Shoreman was able to get treatment at a mental health facility. He wants to make sure mental health programs exist in schools and communities across the country.
âThrough the recovery and through putting my life back together I really leaned on community and they really showed up for me.â
If successful, Shoreman will become the first person with a disability to cross all five Great Lakes. So far heâs raised nearly , which provides mental health support to young people across the country. His goal is to raise $250,000 by the end of the summer.
âEvery single Canadian knows someone who has had a mental health journey or has had one themselves,â Shoreman says. âThis is something that affects rich or poor; it affects every single person.â
Less than a year after his diagnosis, doctors told Shoreman heâd likely never paddleboard again. When he decided to try, he lasted three minutes and spent the next day-and-a-half recovering.
But those three minutes, started a slow return to the water.
âAt that point in time I was still using a cane to walk, so it gave me a lot of confidence,â he says. âI felt like I lost a lot of my power as a human being when everything fell apart and getting back on the board that day, I felt like I was at home.â
So far, the 39-year-old has conquered Lakes Erie, Superior and Huron. He aims to cross Lake Michigan at the end of July, and Lake Ontario in August.