Hey everyone, my name’s Nate.

First, I want to take a moment to thank you for the fact that you’re even reading this. The words on this page come after years of heartache and uncertainty on my part, and the road here hasn’t been simple. Not by a long shot.

In 2018, at only 25 years old, I had already been married for five years and was the father of a three-year-old boy named Eli. He had been delayed in learning to walk and would often trip and fall, something he still does. When I returned home from a military rotation halfway through the year, Eli was diagnosed with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease, subtype 1A.

At that point, I did two things:

First, I enrolled in college to pursue a Bachelor of Science, hoping to one day conduct research on his disease full time.

Second, without really realizing it, I pushed the reality of his diagnosis somewhere deep inside myself. I didn’t want to let it be real.

By 2022, I had graduated from college and, due to the process in which I completed college, become an Army engineer officer. From there, I set my sights on attending the military’s health sciences university, where I hoped to remain an officer, continue financially supporting my family—which had now grown to four—and ultimately earn a PhD in molecular biology.

That didn’t happen.

After being accepted, I was notified that officers outside the medical services branch were no longer able to attend. To continue, I would have to find a way to rebranch—a process I was still several years away from even being potentially eligible for.

I felt lost. Very lost.

For years, I had held onto the belief that I was working toward a point where I could finally do something about CMT. Suddenly, I felt further away from that goal than ever.

So again, I pushed the diagnosis deeper into my subconscious. I wanted nothing more than to live in a world where it didn’t exist.

That changed in late 2024.

I was sitting outside, watching Eli and a few neighborhood kids play backyard soccer. He fell several times—sometimes after kicking the ball a little too hard, or sometimes after getting bumped by another kid.

Eventually, he came over to grab some water.

“Dad—” he wiped the water from his mouth “—why do I always trip and fall?”

My face swelled and a lump formed in my throat. I wrapped him in a hug and eventually managed to ask, “Are you okay, man?”

I checked his ankles and knees for scratches. I retied his shoes. And I reassured him that he’d be okay and sent him back over to his friends.

Although he had no idea, I cried the rest of the time I watched him play.

Three months later, I began the process of medically retiring from the Army and lined up a research position working directly on CMT. I went from spending years wishing I could do something about this disease to working in a lab and studying it with my own hands.

Now, as of September 2026, I’m taking everything I’ve learned—the leadership, the science, the research, and, most importantly, what it means to be the father of a child living with CMT—and setting off on the most audacious part of my mission yet. I will be living off my VA disability, traveling the world, speaking to whoever I need to, and doing whatever I need to in order to help find a cure.

I don’t know exactly what it will take to end this disease. No one does. But I know that researchers around the world are working on pieces of that problem every day. I want to help connect those pieces, bring more people into the fight, and do whatever I can to move us closer to effective treatments and, ultimately, a cure.

There is no quit here.

If you want to donate, which would be super cool, click here. All donated funds will go directly to not only the most promising researchers, but the researchers who my team and I determine are capable of delivering vital portions of the cure.

— Nate