The Incredible Inner Power of David Whelan

“When I repeat the story, it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a horrible, horrible, horrible nightmare…But when I think of that moment of running again—that was so powerful, it was so beautiful. Talk about living in the moment and being so incredibly present and living in each step. My dream came true.” 

David Whelan wasn’t always on the path to being a professional triathlete. “I was injured in a work accident in March of 2012,” he explains, the tone of the date distinguishing the pivotal nature of the day. “I had my foot crushed by a piece of equipment and I was subsequently diagnosed with a condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome [CRPS], which is known as the worst chronic pain syndrome known to science,” Whelan says. Enduring over seven years of intense chronic pain, Whelan says the sheets on the bed felt like sandpaper, he couldn’t hold his girlfriend’s hand for two years, or even walk his dog. He underwent several surgeries hoping for improvement but each one made his pain condition spread farther throughout his body. When a surgeon offered him a 98 chance of being pain free, Whelan made the incredible choice to amputate his left foot. 

But the amputation did the exact opposite. “It was gas on a wild fire. The surgery made [the CRPS] out of control. The doctors were getting me ready for hospice, saying they were sorry, there was nothing they could do,” Whelan recalls. 

Whelan’s future looked bleak but, in a chance meeting with a veteran who was injured in the line of duty. The veteran's injuries resulted in the loss of his limb and was diagnosed with crps. Whelan learned about another specialist surgeon. With nothing to lose, he traveled across the USA to see yet another doctor. The surgeon told him he could help but that treatment could also make the condition take over his entire body and cause the crps to continue to aggressively spread. Facing hospice, however, Whelan decided to go for the radical and invasive surgery and have more of his leg amputated in 2020. The surgery went to plan but, just as Whelan left the operating room, the hospital was shut down for COVID. The doctors thought it was safer for Whelan to be home so, instead of spending two weeks under hospital care, Whelan was discharged and sent home to recover. With the pandemic in full-swing and no support care available, Whelan and his girlfriend undertook his entire recovery themselves; from wound care and medicine to physical therapy and teaching himself to walk again without a leg. At the time, Whelan's girlfriend my girlfriend was running a business, in a competitive masters program at school and helping David when he wasn't mobile.

“My dream that I held onto that was my driving force was to run again. That’s all I wanted to do and I put that dream before absolutely everything. I fought and clawed and gave everything for that,” he says. Whelan would even go outside with his wheelchair or walker so he could watch people walk and run, studying every detail of how they moved. After four months, Whelan was finally able to get into a prosthetic and started to emulate what he had been observing. 

“My first time running again since 2012, I ran just over 4 miles and I felt so incredible. I did not want to stop running,” Whelan says, each word charged with emotion. “When I repeat the story, it doesn’t feel real. It feels like a horrible, horrible, horrible nightmare…But when I think of that moment of running again—that was so powerful, it was so beautiful. Talk about living in the moment and being so incredibly present and living in each step. My dream came true.” 

Whelan didn’t stop running and, after seeing a Challenged Athletes Foundation triathlon, he set himself a new dream of becoming a professional triathlete. Adding swimming and cycling to his exercise routine, Whelan transformed himself into a triathlete. “For the first time in seven and a half years, I’m completely pain free and living that dream of being a triathlete,” Whelan smiles. In the midst of his first racing season where he placed 3rd in the national triathlon development series, Whelan was also scouted for the 2028 US Paralympic development team. 

Whelan’s recovery process has been, and can still be, extremely difficult, often lonely, and he describes challenge after challenge after challenge, including the scary reality that his CRPS can come back at any time. With his resilience, determination, and highly tuned intentional mindset, however, he continues to surmount impossible odds and incredible feats with an energy that goes beyond inspiration and motivation. The pain, in all measures of the word, has taught him to always choose hope and positivity: “Lincoln says you can complain that a rose bush has thorns or rejoice that a thorn bush has roses…I am just in an incredible space right now that I am beyond blessed and fortunate and trying to make the best of it.”