‘Once you get infection in your foot, it goes berserk’ Mississippi’s high rate of diabetes makes state breeding ground for foot and leg amputations

By Susan Christensen Health & Research News Service The first time Chris Williams donned a prosthetic leg, “I walked out with it,” he said. The Byram resident had spent months fighting a diabetes-related foot infection, only to endure the disappointment of a below-the-knee amputation. So he was more than ready to move on – whatever it took. “My mentality was I’m going to beat this. I pushed the envelope, and I was back to normal pretty fast,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t know anything was wrong with me.” But like many people with diabetes, Williams’ foot woes weren’t over. Five years after his first amputation, surgeons took off his right leg at mid-thigh. Such scenarios are sadly familiar to Chris Wallace, director of Methodist Orthotics & Prosthetics, an eight-clinic division of Methodist Rehabilitation Center in Jackson. “About 75 percent of the lower limb patients we deal with are

Read More »

For Brown vs. Board of Education, its 69 years and counting

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education. That was 69 years ago.  Since that time, the landscape of America’s public schools have changed. Much of it, however, is façade. Much has been deep changes, but it may be surprising what a careful observer would find 69 years after the decision. In May of 1954, legal Jim Crow reigned supreme in the southern and border states. On the other hand, in much of the rest of the country, public schools were racially segregated based upon neighborhoods or housing patterns rather than the law itself.  Led by Thurgood Marshall and a team of outstanding lawyers and witnesses, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund had prevailed in its attempt to end the system of gravely disparate funding of public education. Through that case, the plaintiffs also hoped to completely destroy Jim

Read More »

Explore

Gallery

Media

A Salute to Dr. Ivory Phillips!

Dr. Ivory Phillips has been a contributing writer to the Jackson Advocate for 42 years. He has been instrumental in highlighting issues in the Jackson community that deal with education and politics.

Mississippi Voices