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The ADVANCE, February 17, 2021 /Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
A Transplant Story
: rom the Porch
By Amber Nagle
One of my tasks
last week was to be
gin working on an
article about Angel
Flight Soars, a won
derful nonprofit
organization that ar
ranges free air transportation for people in
the South who need to travel far distances
to receive life-saving medical treatment, but
lack the financial means to pay for the ex
pensive flights themselves.
For the patient profile, Angel Flight
Soars suggested I contact Loren, a man
from Darien, Georgia, who had recently
had a successful kidney transplant in Bir
mingham, Alabama. Loren chronicled his
struggles with diabetes and high blood
pressure. Like so many Americans, life was
good — he was working two jobs and sup
porting his family — when severe health
problems came knocking. He grew weak
and lost his ability to work.
“I have always been strong and inde
pendent, then all of sudden I had to ask for
help from others,” he said. “That was very
hard for me.”
Three times each week, he drove to a
dialysis center 45 minutes from his home
to receive dialysis lasting almost four hours
each. Then he had to drive home.
“Staying alive became my full-time
job,” he said.
Loren was accepted onto the transplant
lists of three major hospitals in Jacksonville,
Charleston, and Atlanta when he experi
enced a weird encounter with a stranger in
Walmart.
“When I was out in public, I wore a
shirt or hat telling people I needed a kidney
and asking them to consider being a do
nor,” he said. “As I came out of Walmart, a
stranger came up to me and said, Are you
on the transplant list in Birmingham?’ And
I said, ‘No.’ The woman looked right into
my eyes and said, ‘Get on the Birmingham
list. That’s where your kidney is going to
come from.’”
The following week, Loren filed the
necessary paperwork to get on Birming
ham’s transplant list.
“They tell you to pack a bag and be
ready for the call,” he told me. “Because
when they call, you only have a few hours
to get to the hospital for the surgery.”
Loren prayed for a kidney. He knew
that the day he got the call would be one
of the happiest days of his life — a second
chance at living — but there was a sad,
painful component, as well. A call would
also mean that someone, somewhere, had
suddenly lost his or her life.
Then Loren’s phone rang. Just as the
stranger had predicted, there was a kidney
in Birmingham, and doctors were ready to
transplant it into the Darien man if he could
get to the hospital in three hours.
He tried to arrange transportation on
his own, but the costs were astronomical,
and he had to forfeit the kidney. Loren was
devastated. That’s when someone on Face-
book told him about Angel Flight Soars,
and he signed up for the organization’s as
sistance.
Then in March last year, Loren got an
other phone call — another kidney awaited
him if he could get to the hospital in Bir
mingham in a matter of hours. A volunteer
pilot dropped everything, met him at the
airport in Brunswick, and flew him over
there. After doctors put the kidney into Lo
ren’s body, his body rejected it.
“I came back home,” he told me. “It was
a dark time for me. Not only had the trans
plant failed, but because of the coronavirus,
I was isolated from so many people I love.
I knew I had to have hope, keep believing,
have faith, and be patient.”
He got another call last November.
Again, an Angel Flight Soars volunteer flew
Loren to Birmingham on a small private
plane. That transplant was a success, and
Angel Flight Soars has flown Loren to Ala
bama several times for checkups since the
surgery. It looks like the stranger at Walmart
was right. There was a kidney waiting for
Loren in Birmingham — three matching
kidneys, actually.
During our phone call, Loren relived
the ordeal — standing on the edge of where
life meets death and not knowing if he’d
make it or not; the multitude of setbacks;
and how dramatically his life was changed
by his failing health. Through the entire
interview, there was such a strength in his
voice, and then I asked my final question.
“Did you become friends with the vol
unteer pilots?” I asked. “How do you feel
about the men who flew you over there?”
There was complete silence after the
question left my lips. I thought my cell
phone had dropped the call, but then I real-
Please see Amber page 9A
About a Bathtub
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Lanny and I were
talking.
He's trying to de
cide about redoing
the bathroom at his
house and his wife
left it up to him.
His position is
that if he chooses one
thing, his wife, Tari, will blame him, and if he
chooses another he'll blame himself. Either
way someone will be unhappy.
Getting his way will make Tari unhappy,
meaning everybody will be unhappy. If he
gives in to her, only he will be unhappy. So he
called me.
It is about a bathtub. He doesn't see the
point because they don't use the one they
have. Tari talks about taking a hot soak but
never does: But she might.
I'm not the one to ask because I'm bi
ased, favoring showers.
I'm old enough to remember bathing in
a wash tub and have a picture of me bathing
in a bucket, so I can't be too proud.
There is a bathtub in the mountain
cabin, “Respite.”
The bathroom was an afterthought and
the lack of planning left a ceiling too low to
accommodate a nonstooping shower. Tub
bathing was the only choice.
The tub was pulled from a construction
scrap heap in the 1970’s and hauled to the
mountains for another life. It is a claw
footed, enameled cast iron thing that threat
ens to crash through the floor one day.
The tub is so heavy there are dimples in
the floor where it has compressed the ply
wood and tile.
The bathroom was built around the tub
because it would have been impossible to
muscle it through a door.
There are deep scratches in the enamel
that do not lacerate to the cast iron. Still,
while soaking you can feel the rough edges
against your back.
There are necessary bathing accouter
ments. The tin soap tray, hangs over the side
of the tub and has holes to allow water and
soap to drip through.
The bar of soap in the tray has been
there a very long time. After the soap is dry
from the last bath, it goes into a Mason jar
and away from browsing mice. A bar of soap
will last years at that rate.
On a shelf is a bottle of Watkins lilac
bubble bath. Everybody who takes a bath at
the cabin gets a bubble bath. It's sort of a
heritage thing.
A tin dipper hangs from a nail. It is
dipped into bath water, then poured out to
rinse suds from my back, shoulders and
head.
The cast iron holds heat well. I allow
enough hot water in the tub to warm it up
before topping it off. By the time I slip into
the water, there are no cold spots on the tub.
The faucets are worn enough so that I
can add hot water by turning the faucet with
my toes.
A shower might have been a smarter
choice, but how would I manage the bubble
bath part?
joenphillips@yahoo.com
Random Thoughts
About Random Subjects
I blush as I
write this (well,
not really) but
things are going
well at the
University of
Georgia, the
nation’s oldest
state-chartered
university,
located in
Athens, the
Classic City of the South. UGA
President Jere Morehead’s State of the
University address notes among other
positives that U.S. News and World
Report ranks my alma mater in the top
20 (#15) of all public universities in
the nation. Oh, did I mention we just
got our 25th Rhodes Scholar? All that
and a pretty fair football team, too. Our
cup runneth over....
In the interest of equal time, I will
say that while most Republican
politicians in Georgia seem to have
lost their tongues, a couple of Georgia
Tech grads in the Legislature are
showing some real backbone in
standing up to the torch-and-pitchfork
crowd still smarting over the results of
the presidential election. Former
Yellow Jacket pitcher and current Lt.
Gov. Geoff Duncan seems not the least
bit intimidated by the ominous
rumblings coming from the Trumpsters
about his future political career, nor is
he hesitant to speak his piece about the
election being over and done with....
Another Georgia Tech loyalist,
State Rep. Bert Reeves, R-Cobb
County, calls U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene “an embarrassment to Georgia”
and “the face of radical political
extremism.” Reeves does not say such
things lightly. If Republicans have a
lick of political sense, they will listen to
these two men or get ready to hand the
keys to the Governor’s office over to
Democrat Stacey Abrams next
November....
Speaking of Greene (must we?),
here is proof that political buffoonery
in Georgia is color-blind. First, there
was Cong. Cynthia McKinney, a Black
woman whose only contributions to
our state were a bunch of wacky
conspiracy theories and positioning
herself on the aisle at each State of the
Union address in order to wet-kiss
whatever unfortunate president
happened to be coming by. Greene,
white as new-driven snow, is equally
wacky....
Greene, newly elected from
Georgia’s 14th congressional district,
held a press conference recently to say
she was sorry - sort of - for saying
things like suggesting that the
California wildfires were started by a
space laser beam which was controlled
by the Rothschilds, a prominent Jewish
banking company, and (my favorite)
that then-Supreme Court Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsberg was being played by a
body double. (Who? Dolly Parton?)
She was summarily stripped of all of
her committee assignments, meaning
her constituents can expect taxation
without representation. If she plays her
cards right, Greene could replace
By Dick Yarbrough
McKinney as our next Ambassador to
Outer Space....
I don’t know if you watched the
Super Bowl or not. According to the
ratings, not many did. As is my wont, I
didn’t turn on the television until after
the National Anthem was played, and I
changed channels during the halftime
show because I have no idea who those
people are. So why do I bring this up?
It turns out that Tampa Bay coach
Bruce Arians is the oldest coach to win
a Super Bowl and Tom Brady is the
oldest quarterback to do so. You better
watch us old folks. We rock!....
We are coming up on the 25th
anniversary of the 1996 Centennial
Olympic Games in Atlanta. While I’m
not sure if there will an official
celebration or not, I will have my own
anniversary to celebrate. Two years
after the Games, I was asked to write a
guest column about how well the city
did in hosting the event. I said Atlanta
blew the Games. The city government
was racist, the business community
was more worried about traffic than
how the city would appear to the world
and the local media was in over their
heads. That led to another column
and then another and now 23 years
and some 2,000 columns later, I find
myself the most widely-syndicated
columnist in Georgia
Finally, the outpouring of support
I have received across the state
following the loss of the beloved
Woman Who Shares My Name has
been nothing short of overwhelming.
So many of you have told me how you
welcome me into your homes each
week and how you have grieved for me
and with me. The experience has
reminded me that words have meaning
and to be careful in my use of them. So
I will leave you with these two simple
words: Thank you.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at
dick@dickyarbrough.com: at P.O. Box
725373, Atlanta, Georgia 31139 or on
Facebook at www.facebook.com/
dickyarb.
“"Abuance
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