KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — An East Tennessee man has returned from a trip where he and a team of nine climbed to the top hat of Africa, Mt. Kilimanjaro. This feat is hard enough on its own, but Justin Fields was doing this with Parkinson’s Disease. With the help of his team and Deep Brain Stimulation, he was able to reach the top.

In 2016, Fields was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s. Two years ago was the first time he was able to eat a bowl of cereal without tremors. Now he is eating cereal on the top of Kilimanjaro.

“I’m not going to lie, I was pretty emotional,” Fields said about the feeling he got when he summited.

He said he was never fully prepared for what was ahead of him but knew he had to do it.

“It looked a lot smaller from where we landed. I landed at Kilimanjaro International Airport between Arusha and Moshi.”

On day one he tripped and dislocated a toe, which was fixed quickly by the porters and other tour guides. That start to the trek made it difficult to keep pushing forward.

“Each day I got out of the tent I was just like why, why am I doing this, how am I doing this and how am I going to make it five more days? How am I going to make it four more days,” he said. “You know whenever you get out of the tent you just see where you are and you get that reinvigoration. You want to start the day and you’re like let me make it halfway through, then you get to the second half and then you’ve made it to the next day. It’s just keeping that micro-aspect of it to I can make it 10 more steps, I can make it this additional amount of time.”

When Fields summited Kilimanjaro, he was reminded of a famous quote he lives his life by.

“I was just caught up with the fact that I made it up and it reminded me of a quote from Muhammad Ali, ‘It’s not the mountain ahead that wears you out, it’s the pebble in your shoe’. Having taken Parkinson’s with me to the tallest freestanding mountain in the world, that was my pebble,” Fields said. “I was able to take that nuisance that is Parkinson’s Disease and take it up there with me. I conquered that mountain and we will see what happens in the future.”

We asked Fields if he ever plans on trying to summit one of the other big seven peaks like Mt. Everest in Nepal or Denali in Alaska. He emphatically said no but he does want to scale a 20,000-foot peak at some point.

Fields is still trying to raise money for Parkinson’s research, He is $3,500 short of his $10,000 goal. He says that every little bit helps and asks if you want to donate to do so through his website.