The first thing you notice about Mike Uhrin of Winterport as he walks down the hallway of the Bangor gym is his rocking-horse gait and the large, plastic brace on his left leg.

Then you notice his limp left hand and crippled arm held close to his body.

If you ask, Mike will pull back his black hair and show you the bald spots on his scalp, the place where the bullet from the .38 Special entered and exited his head, leaving him with a medical condition known as left hemiparesis.

But the words really don’t tell you anything about Mike.

Hang out with him for a while and you’ll notice something else – his modest good humor and his intense determination to reach his goal.

Since November, Mike, 31, has been working hard to increase his muscle strength, lose body fat and gain more control over the wayward extremities of his left side. He goes to Gold’s Gym six days a week and does cardio on an elliptical machine for at least an hour. Two to three times a week, he works with his personal trainer for an hour on the gym’s exercise machines, building muscle on both sides of his body.

It’s a considerable challenge for a man with limited use of an arm and a leg, but he knows what he wants.

“My big goal is just to be able to walk around like everyone does … just take my shirt off and be able to go swimming with my shirt off and not scare people,” he said recently, with a big, lopsided grin. “I got the man boobs – I’m not taking my shirt off. I’m not scaring anybody.”

At 6 feet tall, Mike has dropped more than 40 pounds, going from 288 to 242 pounds. He’s gone from a double XL shirt size to XL. His body fat has dropped, too, from somewhere in the 20-percent range to 16.5 percent.

He also keeps getting stronger and stronger. Not bad for a guy who almost killed himself 18 years ago.

Mike was a 13-year-old eighth-grader living in Madison who had grown up around guns, hunted and even had taken a hunter safety course. It was three days before Christmas, Dec. 22, 1985, and he was “horsing around with a handgun” kept in a drawer in a closet in his parents’ bedroom.

“I knew better, but I was at the age I thought nothing could hurt me,” he admitted. “… I was spinning it on my finger…

“I don’t remember it going off, it’s blanked out, all I remember is one of the paramedics coming into the room,” he said.

Semiconscious, Mike knew at the time that he had shot himself, but he doesn’t remember the ambulance ride to Reddington-Fairview Hospital in Skowhegan. The injury was life-threatening. The bullet went in the right side and out through the top of his head.

Mike spent two weeks in the intensive care unit and four months in rehabilitation. He fortunately was back in school by the next September and was taught one on one. Four years later, he was able to graduate with his original class.

The accident left him with little use of his left side, no peripheral vision in his left eye and no short-term memory. “I have a big desk calendar and I write everything down,” he said.

Mike had to give up his dream of being a veterinarian because he would need the use of both hands. He’s self-sufficient, but “it’s the little things I can’t do, like tie my shoes,” he said.

Now he’s learning how to put contact lenses in his eyes with one hand.

Though he can learn visually and by repetition, his one year at the University of Maine wasn’t too successful because of his injury. Reading is a chore, he admitted, because it’s hard to remember what he has read. He also has to use digital clocks because he can’t read the position of the hands on a clock.

He has shrapnel in his skull.

Still, Mike has created a life for himself. He works at the Fort James House in Old Town, a transitional home for special-needs kids, as a member of its direct-care staff. He works with three youngsters, acting as a role model and teaching them how to care for themselves.

Mike was tired of being the biggest guy at the home and decided to make some changes. A major sports fan who loves football, basketball and darts, he knew about training to get fit. Mike used to set up practice fields for the University of Maine Black Bears football team and helped out with the other teams when he attended UM for a year.

He even has a tattoo on his left calf of a black bear holding a helmet. Scooby-Doo is on the other calf, and Mike’s tongue is pierced with a glow-in-the-dark ball.

“If I get lost, I stick my tongue out and follow it home,” he said, with a grin.

Overcoming his intimidation, Mike showed up at Gold’s one day last fall for an orientation session on how to use the equipment. “I figured I could do everything myself, but nope,” he said.

It took three trainers to get him settled on a stationary bike, using elastic bands to keep his wandering left foot on the pedal.

“I’d pedal and it would break, I pedaled and it would break,” he said, smiling at the memory.

It became clear that he was better off with a trainer, so he and Beth Saliwanchik set up a regular routine, and she began to advise him on his nutrition. Because of his need for accommodations, Mike is the most challenging client that Beth, a trainer for two years, has ever had.

Beth said she’s been impressed with how willing Mike is to talk about his accident. “He made it very comfortable for me to know his limitations,” she said during a recent workout session. “I can ask him anything about it. He’s not embarrassed.”

Beth is very proud of his accomplishments.

“It took trying quite a few machines to see what will work,” she said, noting that Mike can’t work with free weights because of his lack of motor control. As he progresses, and with the use of a lifting glove that has a hook attached across the palm, Mike, however, has been able to return to some of the machines that first caused him difficulty.

Mike’s effort is “fabulous,” said Beth. “On a scale of one to 10, Mike challenges himself at 11. He’s always good-spirited about it. He never gives up. He always smiles and works his butt off. He’s one of the nicest people.”

When he first started, he was doing 10-pound weights with both arms on one biceps machine. Now on the same machine, he can do 50-pound weights with his left arm and 95 pounds with his right arm. He started doing hamstring curls using light ankle weights; now he uses a machine, with 35 pounds for his left leg and 55 pounds for his right. On the lat pull-down, which he couldn’t do at all at first, he now hauls a respectable 60 pounds.

When he works out, Mike stays on one machine and rests between each set of exercises – instead of moving from machine to machine – because sometimes it’s too hard for him to get on and off the equipment. His trainer has to help him adjust the grip of his left hand and frequently monitors what his left leg is doing when he’s on leg machines.

“To watch his progress has been so inspiring for me as a trainer – it’s just incredible to watch, because in my mind it shows me that if he can do it, anyone can do it,” Beth said. “It’s a perfect example of how anybody can do it.”

While she expects a lot from Mike, Beth doesn’t always require perfection from him because his left leg and arm so often want to do their own thing.

“I give him a little slack with form, especially biceps, because his arm wants to turn in … it’s a battle,” she acknowledged.

Doing a triceps exercise on a cable machine, Mike admitted that working his left side was “100 percent” as much a mental exercise as it was physical. “I have to keep watching, I have to look out or I might lose my balance,” he said.

Mike would love to play basketball with his nephew next summer and be able to take his shirt off to show off his muscles. He’s grateful to all his friends and everyone at the gym for helping him reach his goals.

But he has other dreams, too, like going back to college and getting a degree and opening his own group home some day, “just basically because I know what the kids go through because I’ve been there.” Most important, Mike wants “just to be treated like a normal person.”

“Why take life too seriously?” he said with a smile. “Everybody talks about … living life to the fullest. I’ve been doing that all my life. All I am is just a big kid.”

NEWS Assignment Editor Jeanne Curran also trains with Saliwanchik at Gold’s Gym.