Deep in the Heart of Texas
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS By Richard J. Margolis On the road—Our station wagon, parting the morning mist at 70 mph, is headed south out of Corpus Christi into the Rio Grande...
...When he has finished his thumping, he removes a pen from his pocket and with excruciating care writes a few words in his folder...
...They visit a dozen clinics each month, assay a million heartbeats...
...and he organized a Health Festival, a fiesta, that had the whole area thinking about things like nutrition and sanitation...
...He's an amazing man...
...I've been allowed to go along for the ride, to take notes for a book on the American health system, but I'm probably the only one in the group who can't tell a ventricle from an atrium...
...Incredibly, he remembers their names and even some of their problems...
...And is there anything wrong with it...
...The middle seat is occupied by Sally Woods, a student nurse...
...Of course, the more they beat the children, the more the children wet their beds...
...Keep your head down," says Mrs...
...Beck as she watches the needle make Dow Jones-like peaks and valleys...
...Now the huge waiting room is empty...
...Mafamoros—We are sitting at a long table in a small restaurant, having arrived here by riding straight through Brownsville and on across the toll bridge into Mexico...
...That, say historians, is how we won Texas...
...Martinez...
...Agapito is talking earnestly to a small, pale girl with large dark eyes...
...Right now we are rolling through the flat grazing country of the Kings, Bishops, Kenedys, and Armstrongs—the big landowners whose barbed wire fences parallel the highway and stretch tiresomely toward the horizon...
...Yes," he says, "only if we don't change their minds the baby could die...
...That was Enuresis Sunday...
...Now Arturo looks up and says something in Spanish...
...I ask...
...Dr...
...So the next time the people came to mass they were astonished to hear a stern sermon on the sinfulness of beating children for wetting their beds...
...He says he must measure the baby's length...
...There's nothing in this room worth looking at...
...You're looking at a failing heart...
...Simpson smiles...
...We need to get her up to Corpus for a complete examination, but the parents are afraid...
...Toledo and Enuresis Sunday...
...I ask my fellow passengers if they have found a positive correlation between congenital heart disease and feudalism...
...It was getting to be quite a dilemma...
...I drift into another room...
...I ask...
...We Simpsonites come in peace, merely hoping to fortify ourselves with beer and enchiladas against the long, clinical afternoon...
...To a teen-age boy: "Are you still taking those little yellow pills every day...
...I lean forward, too...
...Cox is staring hard at an x-ray lit up on a screen...
...We are bound for Raymondville and thence to the border town of Brownsville...
...Well, this Dr...
...We can't see...
...Early diagnosis and treatment could prevent most of the deaths—which is why Simpson keeps his caravan rolling...
...This is the town "Old Rough-and-Ready" took with ease in 1846 —and retook with ease in 1848...
...Nothing much...
...At least twice a week Simpson, his staff and anyone useful he can enlist ride the rural circuit...
...Is she a sister...
...Agapito Sanchez, a young social worker...
...Toledo is a terrific doctor and he's always thinking up ways to dramatize health and hygiene to the people there...
...Anyway, Dr...
...In the examining room Sybil Beck, the electrocardiogram expert, is running her last EKG of the day, on a little girl who doesn't want to lie still...
...He started his own television program, for instance...
...and that, say I, is why I am here today, pursuing the Chicano heart...
...Last year the team traveled 40,000 miles and examined 8,000 children, nearly all Chicano...
...Our cardiac caravan of three cars bears a covey of doctors, nurses and technicians, all of them heart-wise...
...According to Dr...
...Simpson, looking "Texas Casual" in an open-neck gray shirt and slightly baggy gray trousers, glides down the corridor exchanging greetings with patients...
...They say they don't want anyone to tamper with their child's heart...
...To an elderly man: "Did you get that Social Security matter straightened out, Mr...
...William Cox, a heart specialist who once numbered Lyndon Johnson among his patients...
...Raymondville—The other two cars have beaten us to the clinic and the occupants are already hard at work...
...I stare with him...
...She is holding a baby on her lap...
...The boy's parents are hunched in a corner gravely watching as Arturo thumps first the child's chest, then his back...
...Has anyone told you yet about Dr...
...Did Zachary Taylor get up this early...
...Arturo Cortez, a "PCA" (pediatrics-cardiac associate), is driving...
...Toledo is a pediatrician in Eagle Pass, which is a town quite a ways north of here along the border...
...and we have been driving nearly an hour...
...Did it work...
...Toledo plays the organ in church every Sunday—and for free!—there wasn't any graceful way the priest could refuse...
...I pass a room in which Arturo, wearing a white coat, is examining a little boy...
...Maybe we can get a grant to study that," he says...
...It's in failure...
...Only that the boy has a healthy heart...
...This baby," Agapito explains to me, "has something wrong with her heart—we don't know how serious it is...
...At first the priest didn't want to get involved in 'a secular matter,' but because Dr...
...Oh...
...It may be the same route, I am thinking, taken by Zachary Taylor ("Old Rough-and-Ready") with his ragtag army in pursuit of Santa Anna...
...Many of the fathers and mothers have given up a day's wages to be here...
...The parents lean forward to see what he has written...
...He decided to ask the local priest for help...
...States of the Union DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS By Richard J. Margolis On the road—Our station wagon, parting the morning mist at 70 mph, is headed south out of Corpus Christi into the Rio Grande Valley, toward three of the most threadbare counties in all America—Willacy, Hidalgo and Starr...
...About one out of every 100 children born down here suffers from some type of congenital heart defect, and one in three of these dies within the first year of life...
...I ask...
...Simpson calls to me from the other end of the table...
...I squint at the x-ray but I see nothing, neither the heart nor the man...
...Suddenly I am very tired...
...James W. Simpson, 39, head of the cardiology department at the Driscoll Foundation Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi...
...The question seems to amuse him...
...Except there was one problem he never seemed able to solve: He couldn't stop the parents from punishing their kids for bed-wetting...
...and Dr...
...No, the mother...
...I tell Agapito that the parents' position seems reasonable...
...I ask...
...What did you say to them...
...Toledo, nobody wets his bed in Eagle Pass any more...
...Uh, what exactly are we looking at...
...Brownsville—The time is 7 p.m...
...It's a man's heart," he replies...
...On the long ride back to Corpus I shall surely sleep...
...For nearly five hours the staff has been probing the hearts of Brownsville children...
...In the back tier of our station wagon sits the mild-mannered mastermind of these excursions, Dr...
...You start here," he says, placing the instrument beneath the boy's right collarbone, "and carefully work your way across...
...Whoever proclaimed the death of the American nuclear family could not have had these folks in mind...
...Gilbert Muniz, a PCA, is holding a tape measure in one hand, a baby in the other...
...The waiting room is only half full, but the tiny examining rooms are overflowing with nurses, PCAs, children, parents, and grandparents...
...The little girl with the large eyes is staring at me...
...I am free to wander where I please...
...It's mostly Mexican-American except for some Kickapoo Indians who sleep by the river under the bridge...
...The parents are the happiest two people in all of Willacy County...
...They are too poor to be in vogue...
...It is 6:45 a.m...
...Arturo beckons me in...
...The effect is magical: dazzling smiles, musical laughter...
...Simpson, with a stethoscope to a boy's chest, is showing Sally Woods how to detect a certain type of heart murmur...
Vol. 58 • February 1975 • No. 3
