A Father's Journey: Ex-VAR Runs Across The Country For His Daughter

Guy Fessenden has always been a running man.

For years, he ran one of the largest solution providers in the country. DIS Research was a $120 million company, reaching No. 220 on the VAR500, a beacon in an industry where there were seemingly no boundaries and no failures. Fessenden was featured on the cover of CRN in May 2001 for a story about vendors’ increasing incentives to solution providers. The good times, it seemed, would never end.

But like most stories, Fessenden’s life soon took a sharp and unexpected turn. The dot-com bubble burst, forever changing the landscape of the IT channel. DIS went out of business later in 2001. To make matters worse, Fessenden's daughter had been diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 15 and entered a hospital two weeks after he and his wife separated. The combination of his daughter's mental illness, a failing marriage and losing his business started to suffocate him.

"I didn't do well. I went through a revolving door. I was so numb to everything going on in life. I'd watch TV and nothing else," he said. "Somewhere you lose being you. The sadness is so overwhelming it bleeds into your life and it becomes like quicksand. The harder you kick, the more you sink."

So Fessenden ran again. This time it was through a string of unsatisfying and increasingly lower-profile jobs for nearly a decade, a downhill spiral fueled by a daughter's mental illness and a father's inability to figure out how to save her.

"I'm a father. You fix things. And one of the most important things in life is your children. But here's a problem you can't fix. I have to sit and watch her suffer. She's had 20 hospitalizations and has spent 60 percent of the last 12 years in hospitals," Fessenden said.

Next: A Daughter's Struggles

Suzanne Fessenden has lived with diagnosed schizophrenia for almost half of her 27 years. She hears voices, hallucinates. The first thing she does when she opens her eyes each day is cover her ears. As a father, Fessenden could only watch helplessly as his daughter slipped away. It began to take a heavy toll on his life, too.

But some time in 2009, something changed again. It's hard for Fessenden to pinpoint what caused him to take another sharp turn in his life. Maybe it wasn't an epiphany so much as it was the slow realization that if his life slipped away, his daughter's would too. Maybe he couldn't save her. Maybe he couldn't return her to the former life she knew, a childhood free of voices and problems inside her head. But he could help her. And so he started running again. And this time, the stakes are much higher.

On Oct. 2, Fessenden dipped his toes into the cold Atlantic water off the coast of Tybee Island, Ga. He dried his feet, put on a pair of socks and sneakers, and began a journey that he never imagined he was ever capable of doing. And, frankly, still isn't sure.

That day, he ran just over 26 miles, the first of what he hopes will be the equivalent of 100 marathon-length runs over a 140-day period. It's a cross-country journey to raise awareness and money to combat mental illness and he doesn't plan to stop until he can take off his sneakers for the last time and dip his feet into the Pacific sometime next February.

"People who come from a place of pain understand what I'm doing," Fessenden said. "I talked to a woman the other day in her 60s. She lost her 40-year-old son, who was very successful, in a motorcycle accident. She had been devastated for a year. But she started doing volunteer work and it helps keep her going."

Next: Fighting Back

Fessenden started to study schizophrenia. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older -- about one in four adults -- suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. But Fessenden notes that mental illness receives less than 3 percent of the funding as do diseases such as cancer and heart disease.

He also learned of the stigma attached to mental illness, one that affects not only the person afflicted, but all those surrounding them. It's hard to fight an enemy that you won't even look at.

"Suzanne fights two fights. She fights the illness and having to hide it. As soon as someone finds out about it, they run the other way," Fessenden said.

Since embarking on his cross-country journey, Fessenden has received increasing media attention as he looks to raise awareness. Because of that, he said, his daughter has decided to stop trying to hide her illness. "She looks healthier than she has in the last several years. That doesn't mean it's going to last, but today things are better because she decided not to play the stigma game and be ashamed of her illness," he said.

Recently, Suzanne started writing journal entries on her father's Web site, including one post where she talks about electric shock therapy and another about a suicide note she wrote at age 16. They're hard things to read, but he hopes they are the first steps on a long road to recovery.

Next: A Promise Kept

"The first time I held Suzanne, her eyes were so clear. I could look down and see her soul. As a father, I swore I would do anything for her. Now I'm doing whatever it takes, regardless of what suffering that I personally endure. It's nothing compared to what she goes through every day. It's a promise I made. I have an opportunity to deliver on that," he said.

Fessenden has a never been a runner, at least in the physical form of the word. Last year, he read that British comedian Eddie Izzard has just completed 43 marathons in 51 days to support Sport Relief, a venture between Comic Relief and BBC Sport despite having no prior history of long-distance running. The seed was planted.

"I thought about it for a month. I was 20 pounds overweight. I was sitting on the couch. I talked to [Suzanne] first. I said if this is something you're not comfortable with, let's forget the whole thing. She thought about it for a while and said she was more afraid that I was going die out there than anything else," Fessenden said.

He spent about 14 months training to get into shape to be able to begin the big run. "I've gone from 220 [pounds] down to 195. It's still nothing remarkable, but I'm also on a 6,000-calorie-a-day diet. It's great -- you can eat whatever you want," Fessenden said.

A Father's Journey began in Georgia and has continued into Alabama and Mississippi. Thus far, he said he's holding up reasonably well.

Next: Running With Pain

"It varies by day. Every day something hurts and every day it's something else. What's consistent is I'm strong through about 18 miles without much pain. Then the body mechanics start to go. If the right calf starts to hurt, you shift weight to the left side to compensate. Then the left side starts to hurt. By 22 miles, everything is hurting. You stumble across to 26 miles," he said.

Through Oct. 29, Fessenden has completed 21 of the marathon runs. Each day more people take notice. In big cities, reporters want to talk about mental illness. In small markets, they want to talk about a father's love for his daughter. Fessenden jokes that he's often featured as the last segment on the local news because, "For 29 minutes they talk about all the horrible things over the course of the day. With one minute at the end, they can't let you go out in the world feeling like crap," he said.

As his story unfolds, he's started to hear some heartwarming and heartbreaking stories too. "I got a touching e-mail from a mother who's daughter is 15 and was diagnosed at age 12. Twelve. That's a life sentence," he said.

Fessenden and his friend Jeff Weiss, who drives a chase car in front of Fessenden, stay in one hotel for a few days until they make enough progress to permanently move on for another few days.

Fessenden trained on the Bronx River Parkway but being outside New York has exposed him to some different types of road conditions. He’s been bitten by by a dog and sprayed with entrails when a truck ran over a dead animal. "I've been attacked by both live and dead animals in the last few days," he said. "Most of Route 80 [in Georgia], you're running one foot from traffic. One day we saw a four-foot snake just lounging around the road.

NEXT: A Helping Hand

"I'm very worried about completing it. I'm banged up and will be for the next four months of my life. But then I lay my life next to my daughter and it's 'Oooh, I have a muscle strain.' It pales in comparison to what she deals with every day with so much dignity."

Fessenden does not have a specific dollar amount he's trying to raise. "You end up picking numbers out of the air. It would be great to do seven figures, but it's not likely to happen. But you never know. If someone knows somebody close who is affected by this, they may want to make a large donation. I may get them at the right time. It's not like this is done on a frequent basis. It's too insane," he said.

"I'm in completely uncharted waters. I don't have goals. I'd like to make 61 million people who suffer every day better. The bitch of it is it happens so young. People have a genetic predisposition and something activates the thing that makes it come forward. The average diagnosis is [age] 22," he said.

Thus far, Fessenden said he's been underwhelmed by the response from old friends in the IT industry, but he hopes that will change. "The remarkable power of the Internet and Facebook can change that. Part of it is a lot of technology people might not be aware of it," he said.

He jokes that his knowledge in the technology reseller industry hasn't helped him as much as his entrepreneurial spirit has. "The key ingredients about being an entrepreneur are you have a very high pain threshold and you're too stupid to know when to stop. That's exactly what I've been using," he said.

Next: How To Help

But jokes aside, Fessenden acknowledges that this run is as much about helping his own life as it is helping his daughter's. A friend calls it his "run for redemption."

"The first thing you have to do is get off the couch. That's not where you want to live your life. You're going to have to go out and find yourself. This is my way out of the quicksand," he said. "A big part of this is what happens to you when a family member you love is ill. Part of this is getting off the couch. It's an opportunity to do something meaningful and restart my life."

And then, maybe, he can stop running.

For more information on Fessenden's journey or to make a donation, please visit the following links:

Run For A Life: A Father's Journey
DailyMile: A Father's Journey
Facebook: A Father's Journey
Twitter: afathersjourney