ACT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student

Dr. Johnny Joe was the best surgeon in Arkansas. There was one — Dr. Robert P. Howell — who was as good, but it was rumored that he was a Unitarian. Besides, he enjoyed Jack Daniels too much. That was okay if one sought his services on a Wednesday. He was sober on Wednesdays out of respect for his Assembly of God mother who always went to church on Wednesdays. And it was Thursday. Besides, no one could trust a sober Unitarian anyway. Unitarians were as rare as Buddhists in 1990s Arkansas.

Trained in Houston, Texas — the medical school Mecca of the South; everyone wanted a doctor trained in Houston; he must be good if he was from Houston — Dr. Johnny Joe was a brilliant, skilled surgeon. He had assisted in the first heart transplant attempt (the patient died) in Arkansas. He was also a Presbyterian. Everyone knew that the best doctors were Presbyterians who went to medical school in Houston. In spite of one nasty habit — Dr. Johnny Joe chewed Red Chief Tobacco during surgery — he was much sought after. “Wipe my mouth, nurse,” Dr. Johnny Joe often asked.

Dr. Jones loved the Razorbacks. When he had to miss the game, he nonetheless kept the radio blaring in the operating room. Once, while removing Mrs. Nickle’s appendix, Texas intercepted a pass and ran back for a touchdown. Reacting to this tragedy, Dr. Jones’ scalpel accidently cut out Mrs. Nickle’s appendix and spleen. No one blamed him. Texas won the game.

No, my mother was fortunate to have him. He was pretty busy, but since he was a good friend of my mother’s old neighbor Josephine Mae Stuart, he agreed to take my mom’s case.

Five minutes after Dr. Johnny Joe opened my mother up, he determined that the villainous corporeality had begun in the pancreas but it had progressed too far too quickly and it was not worth it for him to do anything but remove a particularly nefarious and ripe-with-cancer gall bladder. This small token would be appreciated but would only slightly delay my mother’s death sentence. Deep inside my mother’s liver, with his rubber-clad left hand, Dr. Johnny Joe had rolled the marble-size tumors between his thumb and index finger. “Wipe my mouth, nurse,” He sighed. “Nellie ain’t going to make it to basketball season.”

Mom’s tumor-infected gall bladder was sent to Houston for tests, but Dr. Johnny Joe had already announced my mother’s death sentence. It was over just that quickly. With buck season in full swing. Dr. Johnny Joe was still able to kill a four point later that afternoon. Mom went home to die. Mom did not know that her gall bladder had been removed until she received her hospital bill. She thought it would be impolite to say anything. Dr. Johnny Joe could have taken out her heart and she would have still been grateful.

Southern medicine was like that. Doctors politely did as they pleased. I am her son and I live in Pennsylvania. We Northerners want to know what our physicians do. We make them give us forms to sign and we ask for long lectures. We even get second opinions. We look at their diplomas on their walls and we want to know if they are board certified. All mom wanted was a smile, a nod, and a pat on her hand. “Johnny Joe is a good boy,” mom said. “Josephine says he visits his mother every Saturday and he tithes.”

For the first time, my mother was hedged in. She could not fight this thing. Her chances of survival, Dr. T.J. Jackson, the oncologist, whose nickname was “Stonewall,” since he was himself named after the famous Confederate general, who was a Texas Longhorn fan — a grievous shortcoming only overcome by his obvious doctoring skills — adjudged, were zero. But she never wanted to hear the truth. Neither Dr. Johnny Joe nor Dr. Jackson told Mom. She did not want to know and they were too polite to tell her. My Yankee blood boiled. I smelled malpractice here. Mom only smelled okra gumbo stewing in the kitchen.

It turns out, however, the okra gumbo probably did her more good anyway. Virginia Maria, her childhood Catholic friend who gambled with her on the grounded riverboats at Greenville, Mississippi, told her, “Nelle, I am so sorry to hear you are going to die. And probably before the July Bonanza Night!”

“I’m sorry to hear that I’m going to miss the July Bonanza Night, too,” Mom calmly responded.

As if she was sipping a new brand of orange pekoe tea, Mom tried a little chemotherapy. No one dared die of cancer in 1999 without having a little chemotherapy. Hospice care was for colored folks, my mom said, who did not have insurance. She meant to have all the medical care Blue Cross and Blue Shield owed her. Unfortunately, it only succeeded in destroying what hair she had left and caused her to discard her last pack of Winston Lights.

“Do you have, Mr. Vice President,” Larry King leaned across his desk, “anything else to add?”

Although we did not know it, these were the last few weeks of her life. Mom sensed it. She had literally moved into her living room. She did not want to die in the backwaters of a bedroom. She did not want to die on the bed in which she and my father had made love and dreamed dreams that neither lived. She did not want to die on the periphery of life. She wanted to be in the middle of the action. Her living room controlled all accesses to her house.

She was the gatekeeper and planned to man her station until she literally dropped dead. A captain at her helm. With her CB radio scanning for police gossip, with practically every light burning, with her television running day and night, Mom wanted to feel the ebullience of life until the bitter end. She intended to watch Larry King Live until she took her last breath. It was Christmas and this was both the last Christmas I would be with my mother on this earth and the first one I had spent with her for two decades. The juxtaposition of these to portentous events seemed strangely ironical to me. I had lost my mother only to reclaim her in death.

I was not proud of the fact that I had not been home for Christmas in 22 years. I had too many kids, too many bills, and too little income to justify a two-day trip from my Pennsylvania farm to Southern Arkansas. Besides, who wanted to leave the postcard, snowy Pennsylvania Laurel Highlands to spend Christmas along the dirty black railroad ties of the Delta? Who wanted to replace the pristine Mennonite farms of Western Pennsylvania with the cotton-strewn roads of Southern Arkansas?

“I want to tell you a few things, Jimmy (my name), before I join your dad,” she said. Mom never said that she was “dying” or even “passing away.” She was always going to join dad or Big Momma or Aunt Mary, who all had died many years ago.

My mother told me some stories that changed my history. Not that history changed — my history changed. Those hours, those days before she died changed the way I saw my past, and therefore my present and future, forever. I began to write this story about my mother. But while she has a ubiquitous presence in my life, I realized I was unqualified to write about her life. I could barely talk about my own. What I discovered really, was that this is a story about both our lives. Lives that would be thrown together and torn apart in ancestral kinship, in hatred, and finally thrown together again in great love.

CIENCE

Forming Conclusions

Malaria produces recurrent attacks of chills and fever. Caused by a parasite that’s transmitted by mosquitoes, malaria kills over a million people each year.

While the disease is uncommon in colder climates, malaria is still prevalent in subtropical countries. There is no preventive medicine available, but a vaccine to prevent malaria is currently under development.

A malaria infection is generally characterized by recurrent attacks with the following signs and symptoms:

severe shaking chills
high fever
profuse sweating

Other signs and symptoms may include:

headache
nausea
diarrhea

Malaria signs and symptoms typically begin within a few weeks after a bite from an infected mosquito. However, some types of malaria parasites can lie dormant in the body for months or even years. Malaria is fatal, but only with patients who are weakened by malnutrition or other disease.

Fifty people went on a mission trip to Honduras. Fifteen were infected with malaria. Of those infected, 90% had visited a village in a remote area next to a river. What may you conclude?

Most of the infected persons had insomnia.
Many of the infected persons were bitten by malaria mosquitos near or in this village.
Most of the infected persons did not use mosquito netting.

I
II
III
II and III
All

Which of the following statements are true:

A mosquito becomes infected by feeding on a person who has malaria.
If you’re the next person this mosquito bites, it can transmit malaria parasites to you.
The parasites can lie dormant for as long as a year.
When the parasites mature, they leave the liver and infect your red blood cells. This is when people typically develop malaria symptoms.
If an uninfected mosquito bites you at this point in the cycle, it will become infected with your malaria parasites and can spread them to the next person it bites.

I
II
III
IV
V
All
None

Who would be most likely to die of malaria infection:

Young children and infants who are weakened by other diseases
Travelers coming from areas with no malaria
Pregnant women and their unborn children
Athletes
Starving people

I
II
III
IV
V
I, I, III
All
I and V
I. None