THAT’S STUPID
“That’s stupid,” he told me. “Stupid.” And it was. My younger brother was reading me the riot act. He wasn’t shouting, or even angry; disappointed perhaps, dismayed certainly. He just wanted me to know that I had been stupid.
He was right. I was one of literally thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even millions of poor people who are medically adverse. We avoid medication like it was poison—and given the reality of how the medical community has treated poor blacks in the United States, from Tuskegee to sterilization in South North Carolina, as well as many other examples, we do well to be skeptical. Yet, there is a big difference between skeptical and stupid, and I had eased on across the line.
Now there was no denying, in refusing to take the prescribed medication I had made a bad choice and was paying the price.
I thought I had the flu and severe leg cramps. My shortness of breath was self-diagnosed as just getting old. At 64, climbing three flights of stairs was now a real chore. I would haltingly reach the top and have to lean against a wall, gasping deeply for air. One of my students advised that I take the elevator. Pigheaded as ever, I refused, choosing instead to fight through it by five minutes of deep breathing as I sat sprawled in a chair one-size too small for my bulk.
But then there was this new pain: a hard leg cramp. I have suffered with leg cramps all my life, usually they attacked infrequently, maybe once or twice a year, and usually after some stretching and walking, the pain would subside, but this time not only did the pain persist, there was a heavy swelling that had never happened before.
Later, after a battery of tests, the problem was pinpointed: I had a blood clot in my right leg. That condition in combination with unmanaged hypertension was literally a potential killer. Ironically, we now believe that the blood clot developed during a long drive to and fro from New Orleans to Atlanta. Lionel McIntyre and myself left 5:30am Tuesday morning, spent three or four hours in Atlanta with a mutual friend who was terminally ill, and returned immediately, arriving back in New Orleans 1:30am Wednesday morning.
That was a long period of sitting with no exercise. Wednesday I went to work. Thursday we had half a day of work and I ended up staying home. By Friday I was suffering diarrhea and extreme pain in my leg. I thought I had the flu, so I went into self-treatment mode, plus the coming week was Thanksgiving, so I was off the entire week; off and getting no better. I had promised my daughter if I wasn’t better by the weekend I would call my brother.
“Stupid.” I was stupid for not treating my hypertension three years ago when it was initially diagnosed.
* * *
Keith is the youngest of three Ferdinand brothers. He is a cardiologist who is a nationally recognized expert on hypertension. “Man, why you didn’t keep up with the medication?”
Like most negroes, I had no direct answer. My negligence was more a non-decision than an active avoidance.
The big problem was that Keith was now domiciled in Atlanta, on staff at Emory University. As was the case for the majority of the Black professionals in New Orleans, after Katrina, they had to vacate the premises in order to make a living. The decimation of the black middle class was near complete as the result of Katrina. When doctors and lawyers can’t make it, the system is in bad, bad shape.
Before the storm Keith had a major practice, Heartbeats Life Center, and was treating up to thirty patients a day. I remember Keith having a hard time finding physicians to work at his clinic. Most of the young doctors didn’t want to work the hours that Keith routinely put in. Additionally, few of them were open to explaining procedures and talking with the clientele on a basis of real concern. One of the physicians Keith hired was from Iraq and to this day remains sincerely grateful to Keith for offering not just employment but also an invaluable training experience.
Dr. Gholam Ali left Baghdad in 1997 and worked with Keith before the storm hit in August of 2005. When I called Dr. Ali on a Sunday, he immediately set up an appointment on Monday morning. When we met face to face, one of the first things Dr. Ali said to me was, “give me a hug. You Are family.”
No other medical professional had ever greeted me like that. Dr. Ali gave me a major check up and scheduled me for a detailed sonar exam that afternoon. Once the blood clot in my right leg had been confirmed, I was confined to the hospital from Monday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon. My condition was serious.
While in the hospital I did a cursory inspection of the hospital hierarchy at Tulane Medical Center. All the janitors were black and poor, both male and female. Most of the clerks were black females. The nursing staff was mixed black and white, with one or two black males. The doctors were a virtual united nations, with the head physicians being mainly Jewish. Those of us who were patients were a mixed lot with one element in common, we all had health insurance.
The At Ensemble of Chicago has a recording titled People In Sorrow, and that is generally the condition of the black and poor in the United States today. Go in Walmart or Dollar General, pass through the emergency ward of any major urban hospital, you will see us, obviously overweight, and as we age, more and more prone to chronic illnesses.
Although far too many of us inhabit this social space, one category you really don’t want to fall in is black, poor and no health insurance. Indeed, were it not for my brother Keith and excellent care from Dr. Ali, I just might be among the deceased. My case was that serious.
* * *
A couple of months back, I was talking with Ariel, a Students at the Center staff member who graduated from high school in 2009.
In 1974 brother Hodari Ali and I were delegates to the Sixth Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We spent a weekend hanging out in Zanzibar. My Swahili was rudimentary, Hodari was conversational. We had a wonderful experience walking around the ancient, island city. Since that time we had seen each other maybe two or three times, but our faces always lit up when we came in contact. I had just received word that Hodari had died.
Ariel gently questioned me as I explained to her that it seemed like every two or three weeks I receive word that someone I know had died. “How does it make you feel?”
I looked at her and gave a typical Kalamu answer. How does it make me feel? One word was sufficient: “Next.”
And that was the end of that conversation.
My dear friend Ed Brown, whom I had driven to Atlanta to see, made his transition one week later, the day before Thanksgiving. I am one of the caregivers for Harold Battiste, a New Orleans jazz icon who produced nine gold records, was the musical director for the Sonny and Cher television programme, and served as a producer/arranger for Sam Cooke. Harold had a medical setback in May 2011. Although everyone avoided saying heart attack, it almost took him out. On October 28, 2011 Harold celebrated eighty years old.
I had committed myself to working with Harold and getting him to that major milestone. In March 2012 I’ll make sixty-five. After that all bets are off.
—kalamu ya salaam