Princeton teacher Erin Matlick to fight disease

About four years ago, John Matlick noticed his wife, Erin’s, energy was low and her weight had changed a little bit.

He attributed it to having a lot of stress from her job.

Then he had some really good friends reach out to him, saying they were concerned about Erin.

“They said, ‘She’s not the same Erin. We think something’s up,’” he said.

That’s when it hit John that Erin was showing similar signs of the neurological disease, Ataxia, that claimed her father, Lyle Snyder, at age 43, in 1993.

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Logan eighth-grader Jack Oester leads the Lions out to the floor for Tuesday's Fight like Erin Night against LaSalle Lincoln at Prouty Gym. (Mike Vaughn)

Snyder, who had coached at Sterling and was athletic director at Galesburg, became symptomatic when he was about 36.

“Standing became a little difficult or he got dizzy. He lost his fine motor skills, ability to write or tie his shoes …. He knew something was wrong. All this went on and he passed away,” John said.

“Well, I’m going to fight like Hell. I’m going to fight as hard as I can against this thing.”

—  John Matlick relaying what his wife Erin said

While Erin, 43, and her siblings, Whitney and Graham, always feared seeing what happened to their dad, and hoped the disease hasn’t been passed down, it was a 50-50 chance it would.

“I think I was turning a blind eye to the whole situation. Kind of like, ‘Nah (this isn’t happening).’ My first thought went to her dad. ‘Oh my, is this that?’ And fear,” John said.

John got a hold of Erin’s mom, relaying what their friends had said and she agreed something was up and it was very similar to her father’s symptoms.

The Matlicks kept it to themselves mostly for awhile, “trying to keep everything normal,” John said.

But Erin became more and more symptomatic and they knew they needed help.

“Now we’ve got to go to the doctors. Now we’ve got to start addressing this. We’ve got to do something. We need help,” John said.

The Matlicks were referred by Dr. Chris Blanford to a neurologist in Peoria, who pressed them to go to Mayo immediately. John said they ran a gauntlet of tests there, but struggled to come up with answers.

“One time they think it’s this and it’s not that. One time they think it’s that and it’s not that,” John said. “They haven’t figured it out. They haven’t been able to diagnose it.”

They do know it was not good and it was very rare.

“In our world population of nine billion people, Erin is the only person documented in having this thing,” John said. “It’s undiagnosed at this time, because they haven’t figured out which gene it is and what it’s doing. But they know it has been handed down through hereditary of her dad’s side. That’s where it’s coming from.

“What we’ve decided, she has an ultra-rare degenerative genetic disease that has not been diagnosed. She’s symptomatic of Ataxia, but not a specific Ataxia.”

The prognosis is grim. There is no cure.

“It’s only going to get worse,” John said. “How do you fix something if you don’t know what it is? Unfortunately, this is not fixable. This is not going to get better. It’s only going to get worse.”

Driving back from Mayo, after hearing the news they feared most, John said Erin sat up and said “Well, I’m going to fight like Hell. I’m going to fight as hard as I can against this thing.”

Those words have defined Erin’s courageous battle cry: “Fight Like Erin.”

T-shirts were made last spring with the words “Fight Like Erin” emblazoned. John used his artistic skills to create a Fight Like Erin logo combining Erin’s two favorite teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Iowa Hawkeyes.

The Princeton Elementary School family, where both the Matlicks work, and the Princeton community, with the help of their families and the Rockridge (John’s hometown) and Bureau Valley (where he taught and coached baseball) communities, have rallied around the Matlick family.

Logan Junior High held a “Fight Like Erin Night” fundraiser Tuesday night at Princeton High School, where the Lions teams battled LaSalle Lincoln, with an array of silent auction items, 50-50 drawing and donations to support the Matlick family.

John called it a victory for the Princeton community.

“It’s humbling. When you walk out in the community and see people wear Fight Like Erin shirts. That’s pretty cool and neat,” he said.

John proposed to Erin at Mayo Field, a minor league park in Rochester, Minn, in 2010. They have two children, Ellie, 11, and Nolan, 9, a promising left-handed pitcher just like his dad.

Life has not been easy on Erin. She lost her leg to a farming accident at age 10, she lost her dad when she was about 12 and now she has a terminal disease.

That hasn’t kept her from living life. She may be in a wheelchair, but she’s still going to work every day at Jefferson School in Princeton where she serves as a special ed teacher.

“She’s still going to work. She still puts forth the effort to be friendly, personable, nice,” John said. “When we get home, it’s hard. There’s no doubt about that. She still turns it on for people. That’s awesome.”

But it’s not easy.

“What we do at our house every morning and every evening is no short of miraculous. I believe in miracles, because of what I see every day. I see incredible things,” John said. “Yeah, I take the brunt of this. It’s hard. But if Erin can do this every single day and if she can still go to work and help others, when she needs the help. Yeah, we have a bad day. Erin’s fighting every day. We can all fight.

“Fight like Erin? Hell yeah, fight like Erin. There’s no better way to fight. I tell people you don’t have to fight like Erin. But you can fight your own fights. Step up and fight. ... Erin’s an inspiration. When you’re having a hard day, think about Erin. She kind of knows the outcome, but she’s still going to fight.”

John refers to the late ESPN anchor Stuart Scott, who lost his fight with cancer in 2015 at age 49, when he talks about how he wants to continue the fight for his wife.

“Stuart Scott said was going to fight cancer for as hard as he could and when he couldn’t fight any more, hopefully someone else would step up to fight it. That’s what we’re going to do for Erin,” he said.

“We’re all going to be better people because of this. It’s made me a better husband and a better man.”