We Lost Two Humanitarians That Week

There are some people who were born to help others.  Not just a few, but multitudes.  A couple of weeks ago, the world lost two of them.  One was Nelson Mandella.  I don’t need to tell you about him.  A Google search turns up 1.5 billion results.  I’m going to tell you about someone lesser known, but who made an impact of countless lives, including mine.

He was Don Williams.  No, not the country music legend, just somene well-knowd in and around Greenwood, Arkansas.

He and his wife, Ann, were the first friends my parents made when we moved to the small town when I was almost 2 years old.  They and their three kids are part of the ever-shrinking group of people who knew me since before I can remember.  They’ve been like an uncle and aunt to me ever since.  The two families often went on camping trips and other activities together.

When I was in 1^st grade, Santa Claus knocked at our door.  My brother, Mike, was three years old then and we were both ecstatic.  Santa sat on in front of the fireplace and we took turns sitting on his lap to tell him what we wanted.  I noticed Santa had shoes just like Don’s and thought Don must really know how to pick a good pair of those if he bought the same ones Santa wore.

The next year at Halloween the Williams family decorated their 3 bedroom ranch house as a haunted house.  They didn’t even charge people to go through it.  It was the early 70s.  Tmes were different and Greenwood was much smaller then.

Even after my family moved to Fayetteville a few years later, we never lost touch with them.  When we moved back seven years later, the friendship with them was like we’d never been gone.

In 1998 I was listed for a kidney/pancreas transplant.  When Don and Ann found out I needed to raise $50,000 because the pancreas wouldn’t be covered by Medicare, they organized a fund-raising committee.  A couple of weeks later, the first event took place.  They worked at that one and several others.

On that life-changing day in April, 1998 when I got The Call that a kidney and pancreas match was available, they actually beat the surgeon, who had to harvest the organs at a hospital a couple of hours away, to Oklahoma City.  More importantly, they waited with my parents during the 7 hour surgery.

When I woke up in ICU, the first two faces I saw were those of my parents.  The next two were Don and Ann.  How appropriate that they were there when I stopped being diabetic.  They drove two hours to visit me in the hospital when I was first diagnosed in 1977.

 I presented Don and Ann with the Greenwood Citizens of the Year award in October, 1998.  Pictured from left are Don, Ann, my mom, me, and my dad.

The list of humanitarian deeds Don did is long.  Even those closest to him probably couldn’t name them all.  Most of them had to do with helping those less fortunate.  Much of it was part of the United Methodist Church.  Others were as part of other organizations or on his own.  

Is it fair to compare Don to Nelson Mandella?  Well . . . yeah.  Okay, he never spent time behind bars, justly or not and his impact was on a much smaller scale.  But they shared a spirit of selflessness.  They both did all they could to lift up others.  Don was a Christan and the embodiment of the phrase “faith in action.”

I’ve often wondered if people who die around the same time are more likely to run into each other in the hereafter.  Maybe there’s some kind of orientation they do, kind of like freshman orientation at college.  Or maybe kindred spirits are naturally drawn to each other there.  I can picture Don in heaven, swapping notes with Nelson Mandella.

This isn’t the first time I’ve lost someone who had a positive impact on my life.  I know from experience that one of the best things you can do to keep someone’s memory alive is by doing things they did.  It doesn’t’ matter if you’re as good at it as they were.  Do it in rememberance of them and you just might feel their presence.  Since I’m talking about humanitarians, you know what I’m going to say next.

Uplift others whenever you can.  

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Blindaversary

It seems like a lifetime ago.  At twenty-two years, I suppose it is a lifetime.  The anniversary almost slipped up on me this year.  But, this uncanny and often irritating ability I have to remember dates and even days of the week they happened—always pops up sooner or later.  This year, September 25^th falls on a Wednesday, just as it did in 1991.

The week before, I’d had a dye test where they photographed the blood vessels in back of my eye after a yellow dye was injected into a vein in one of my arms.  Then I nervously waited for them to call with the results.

They called me at work that Wednesday morning.  “You have diabetic retinopathy.  If you don’t have laser treatments right away you could lose all your vision.” 

Outside my office, my co-workers went about their business.  If someone’s world comes crashing down around them and nobody else hears it, did it really happen?  Apparently so. 

I needed air.  I needed space.  My office was closer to the back of the building.  The next thing I knew, I was standing in the alley, trying to catch my breath.  The intense Austin sun felt like it would cook me alive.

Home.  Just get home.  Now.

I found my way to the front parking lot, got in my truck, and drove to my apartment.

What am I going to do now? 

I had only been there a few months.  My health insurance wasn’t due to start until October 1^st.  Just a couple of months earlier, I discovered my kidneys were failing.  This news was like a hammer driving a nail all the way in.  Any pretense I had that maybe, just maybe I could stay in Austin and make it all work was gone.  After Tampa, Kansas City, and Dallas, I’d finally a place—the place—I wanted to stay.  It was so much like the quirky college town where I grew up but with big city amenities.  My paychecks were increasing.  After laying the groundwork, the accounts I’d opened were really starting to produce sales.  Life was on a steady upswing.  Well, except for failing kidneys.

My parents were anxiously waiting to find out the results of the test.  I called them and we made plans for them to drive to Austin the first weekend in October to help me pack up and move back in with them.  Life as I knew was coming to an end, but at least I wouldn't have to face it alone.  Still, as the oldest kid, I felt guilt at being a burden on them.

Since then, some of my worst nightmares came true.  Some amazing blessings rescued me.  I’ve had to pick myself up and go forward countless times.

When I want to torture myself, I try to imagine what life would have been like if my health hadn’t failed and I’d been able to stay in Austin.  I’ve been back twice—in 1996 and 2001.  Each time, it was so much bigger than before.  From what I hear, it’s much more expensive and resembles Dallas and Houston more than the place I remember.

There are two things I was good at then and, thanks to professional guidance and practice, am even better at now.  Writing and visual art.  There are some gifts that vision loss can dull, but never take completely away as long as there’s some vision left. 

In the months that followed me leaving my job, selling most of my things, and returning to Arkansas, I had plenty of time to sit around my parents’ house and ponder the future.  There was one thing I vowed to do over and over again: surpass the expectations of people who thought I wasn’t capable of much anymore.  I approached my new reality with the same tenacity I’d used to support myself in college and graduate in four years, even after changing majors and watching some of my friends give up. 

I run into trouble when I expect things to be as easy as they are for people who can see fine.  Sometimes it turns to resentment, which is as unproductive and unhealthy as guilt—another emotion that invades my mind when I remember the mistakes I made as a young diabetic in my teens and twenties.

On this day in 1991, the sense of fear and loss had me wondering if I would ever accomplish anything.  I assumed that my skills and abilities would be frozen where they were then, as a 27 year-old who had no idea what he really wanted to do with his life.

Back in 1991, it would have helped me to know that before I was halfway through my forties, it would be the most productive decade of my life (so far).

In 1991 it would have given me such relief to know that by the end of that decade, I would no longer be diabetic.

In 1991 I would have been overjoyed to know that ten years later, after eye hemorrhages, invasive procedures and procedures, I would create a large piece of art like this.  

 Visit Jim's web site JimFairbanks.net

Happy Birthday to My Failed Pancreas

You’ve been in there 15 years today.  What an amazing time it has been.  You worked hard, keeping my glucose normal until a year ago.  That’s longer than the average transplanted pancreas lasts.  During that time I never had a single problem with you.  You went to work as soon as you were stitched in place.  By the end of the day, a nurse in ICU would tell me those four words I never thought I’d hear, “You’re not diabetic anymore.”  I drifted off to sleep feeling more free than I’d felt in 21 years, in spite of all the tubes and wires that tethered me to all sorts of medical equipment. 

You worked beautifully every day, right up until you stopped making insulin altogether.  I gave you quite a workout in those first few months, eating sweets to my heart’s content, just because I could.

You held up in spite of all the harsh chemicals in my bloodstream keeping my immune system from attacking you.  You held up after the kidney failed and I had to get another.  You held up when I had cancer and my body was flooded with toxic chemotherapy. 

You gave me 14 years of a life I bid farewell to when I was only twelve.  At that ender age I had to accept that I would be diabetic for the rest of my life along with the insulin shots, a strict diet, and a long list of possible (and scary) health problems that went with it.  After several years with the disease, some of those scary health issues began.  It looked like my life was on a long downhill slide.  After doing peritoneal dialysis for 9 months and waiting for a kidney, I discovered a pancreas could be transplanted.

Just like that, I had to rewrite reality.  The impossible was possible after all.

I wasn’t the only one praying for your arrival.  Hundreds of people held fund-raising events to raise the $50,000 I needed to pay for you.  Insurance paid for the kidney, but not you.  I’m not exaggerating when I say you were much-anticipated by many.

You reminded me and so many others miracles do happen.  Some of them have never met me in person.  Who knew one small organ no larger than a deck of cards could impact so many? 

Of course, it wouldn’t have happened without the surgeons, the young man whose life ended the day before, and his family who allowed you to be donated to me.  Because of that, my relationship with you was bittersweet right from the beginning.  This is the first “re-birthday” I’ve celebrated since your retirement last year.  Now it’s more bittersweet than ever.  Yesterday, the anniversary of my donor’s death, I lit a white candle in his honor just as I’ve always done.

The kidney I received the same day I welcomed you to my body has been replaced and one day you will be as well.  Then there won’t be any part of that young man who saved my life in there anymore.

But the impact of that day—the most life-altering event of my life—will live on for the rest of my life.

Visit my web page JimFairbanks.net

Putting Myself Out There

It’s done now.  My memoir has been a work in progress for almost 7 years.  To put it into perspective, that’s more than 3 times the gestation period of an elephant.  Since starting it in early 2006 I’ve moved twice, endured the worst ice storm in state history, had a severe eye injury, survived cancer, had gall bladder surgery, and have adjusted to being diabetic again.  I was working full-time back in 2006 but left that in late 2009 because it was just too stressful.  I know, excuses, excuses.  Part of that time I was just unfocused and unsure of what to do next.

“You have to blog.”

“You have to Twitter.”

“You have to Facebook.”

Those were only a few of the bits of advice I got along the way—the ones I did. 

I also joined Toastmasters International so I could fine-tune my public speaking skills.  Earlier this year I did well in the International Speech competition with a speech about my experience as an organ transplant recipient.  It was a glimpse at the future, when I’ll be talking to large groups of people about my life and the memoir.

There were other writing projects along the way.  A humor book about Northwest Arkansas, magazine articles, short stories, and an almost-completed novel to name a few.

Sometimes I lost sight of the project that started me on the path as a serious writer.  I was like Murphy Brown’s house painter who never quite finished the job until the end of the series.

And now here we are.  It’s out of my hands and in the formatting process.  As any writer (or any creative person for that matter) can tell you, it takes a thick skin to put your work out there, to open yourself up to scrutiny, criticism, judgment.  I already knew that from approaching shop owners about selling my humor book.

But this is different.  This is my life on paper, along with a few photos of me during good health and bad. 

This is me.

I’ve been told countless times I have a lot of courage.  I guess so.  I just did what I had to do to survive.  But that’s nothing compared to the courage it takes to put all my experiences into a package, slap a current photo of myself on the cover, and say, “Here it is.  Buy it.  Read it.  Form your own opinions and judgments about my life.”

The day I submitted the manuscript, my hand hovered over the mouse, reluctant to click the “upload” button.  I had given my first insulin shot and faced surgery with less angst than I had about letting go of the story.

Next month it will be out there.  I’ll be out there.  Submitted for your approval.

 

Jim's book, What Didn't Kill Me Made Me Stronger, will be available on Amazon in print and Kindle.