June 2004: Vol. 83, No. 3June 2004: Vol. 83, No. 3
f you have turned to this editor’s column without first reading Josh Darnell’s account of Susy Dirr’s life-and-death struggles with cystic fibrosis, stop reading right now. I mean it. Before you read another word of this column—which contains the latest news on Susy’s condition—please click on this link and read “Team Dirr.” To appeciate what’s happened to her since we closed that story, you need to understand the lengths to which Susy (ABJ ’99) and her family have gone to keep her alive.
Finished reading? Then I’m happy to inform you that as this issue of GM was about to go to the printer, Susie’s sister Katie sent out a group e-mail with a subject line that read “Susy got the call!”
As in a new lung transplant.
On Wednesday afternoon, May 12, surgeons at an organ transplant center in Chapel Hill, N.C., gave Susy a new lease on life. “These aren’t just good lungs,” the doctors told Susy’s mother. “They’re excellent lungs!” That was incredible news for Bonnie Dirr and her husband—former UGA horticulture professor Mike Dirr—who had moved the family from Athens to Chapel Hill because a lung transplant is the only hope cystic fibrosis sufferers have to lead a semblance of a normal life.
CF is a terminal disease; most patients don’t live to see their 30th birthday. Susy is 27. But as GM went to the printer on May 19, her future appeared open-ended—for the first time in her life. The surgery took 12 hours, ending at 3 a.m. A dcctor who observed the exhaustive procedure said, “The X-rays look fabulous.” A few days later, Susy—who has been tethered to an oxygen tank for some time—was not only off the ventilator, but walking and communicating with friends. Her first e-mail read:.
“It’s me, Susy . . . barely conscious but able to type . . . I’ve been high on morphine for several days now, hallucinating heavily about cookies and cakes . . . I greatly appreciate all the love and prayers. Without them, I could never have gotten so far. I need a few more days before I fully remember where I am. Until then, mucho love, Susy.”
Three writers went to great lengths to make this issue possible. Senior journalism major Josh Darnell, who wrote two other stories besides “Team Dirr,” did all that while finishing spring semester classes and taking final exams. Tracy Curlee, whose regular job is editing and coordinating UGA publications, has written so many GM stories of late—five in this issue alone—that we have added her to our staff box as a Contributing Writer.
And then there’s assistant editor Alex Crevar, whose infectious personality and deeply-textured stories have entertained our staff and impressed our readers for nearly five years. In the June 2000 issue, we sent Alex to India to cover Steve Dancz’s musical audience with the Dalai Lama, to Cuba with a group of UGA students who were getting a first-hand look at Fidel Castro’s experiment in communism, and to downtown Athens for a feature on the UGA alums in Widespread Panic. All three in the same issue!
Though he contributed only one story to this issue, Alex had no business saying yes to that one. He had already tendered his resignation in order to move to Croatia, where he will write a book and blanket the European continent with his unique brand of freelance stories. But instead of hopping a plane to Zagreb, Alex first flew to San Francisco to profile a pair of native Athenians, Cynthia Kenyon and Cori Bargmann, who are two of the most influential young scientists in the world (see p. 32).
Readers will still see Alex’s byline in GM from time to time, but it won’t be the same for those who worked with him every day. Good luck, Amigo!
©2004 by the University of Georgia.