While growing up in North Tonawanda, Travis Barke had noticed that his ribs poked out on his left side, but he didn't pay it any mind. It never stopped him from playing most sports that his school had to offer, and he wouldn't let a scoliosis diagnosis slow him down. He first heard the news when he was 13 – by the time he turned 20, a surgeon told him how bad the situation had become.

“Surgery is probably the only way to go. Or else it will eventually cut into your lung later on in life," Barke remembers hearing. "It was a very bad day. I didn’t know what to think. That’s a major surgery. I was very active.”

Barke had competed in powerlifting competitions since turning 12, and remembers playing football, lacrosse, boxing and wrestling.​ He tried to paint a rosy picture to anyone who asked about the impending procedure – an eight-hour gauntlet that would correct his spine with two titanium rods and 17 screws.

"I was just trying to stay positive. Every story I read, it wasn’t good," he says. "They would need two, three, four surgeries down the line. They wouldn’t fuse right. I was known as a strong kid, and I didn’t want to stop being that guy.”

The recovery was more excruciating than the surgery. Barke was on bedrest for nearly a full year, with no physical therapy for six months and no cardio for eight.

“I was depressed," he says. "I couldn’t work out. I just couldn’t move much. I needed help getting up, log-rolling into bed. I needed help doing everything. Showering. Name it, and I needed help doing it."

He expected physical therapy to lift his spirits – until his doctors advised him against physical labor after his recovery.

“They were saying ‘get an office job. You’re never going to be able to do what you were going to do. I wanted to get into corrections. They said ‘no you can’t do that. Get an office job. Sit at a computer all day.’"

Barke wouldn't stand for that blasphemy – after he spent a full year recuperating, he started hitting the gym six or seven days a week. When he started lifting again, it was a struggle to move a 45-pound bar – making it all the more remarkable that he was entering powerlifting competitions just two years later. 

“Everyone kept telling me not to do it. Still, people tell me, ‘Wow, you’re crazy for doing this,'" he says with a smile. "But if you have a passion, you’ll find a way.”

Crazy or not, Barke's passion for powerlifting was a big reason for his recovery. He's currently balancing strenuous workouts with his full-time job working maintenance for the North Tonawanda school district, which requires him to lift heavy object and bend his body into exhausting positions. Barke has endured too much to find that line of work boring.

“I look at my old X-rays of how curved my spine was, and the new one with rods and screws in it, and then I look at my deadlift videos, and I just can’t believe it," He says. "I’m like, ‘Wow. It’s holding up.’ I’m testing it. Like the bionic man."

The moral of Barke’s story is simple, with one caveat.

“Always run it past your surgeon, but don’t rule yourself out of what your true passion is."