By Jackie Hampton,
Publisher,
I am so incredibly excited that 2019 is here and I take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy New Year in hopes this year will be one of the best ever.
As far as The Mississippi Link is concerned, we will stay the course as we move forward to increased growth while meeting challenges head on. We know that everyone has challenges in life and we are happy to be in that number, because when we cease to have challenges, we cease to grow.
Whether our challenges are personal, business, family, or health related, God gives us mechanisms to remain diligent and steadfast in spite of what we face.
When I think of the various challenges that people have had to endure in 2018, I cannot help but think of someone that I consider part of The Mississippi Link family. Kam Williams has been a reliable columnist for The Mississippi Link for over seven years. We count on him each week and he has never let us down. He is consistent and persistent. He is well known by newspaper publishers all over the world and takes his work serious. Kam does film reviews, book reviews, and conducts interviews with well known celebrities. He appears regularly in our print edition and on our web site.
While submitting a film review titled “If Beale Street Could Talk” for the newspaper’s final 2018 edition, Kam was at home quarantined and radioactive, unable to be around other people. Very few people at The Mississippi Link knew that Kam had been battling cancer for several years.
He recently received an aggressive medical treatment, unfamiliar to many (including physicians), called “Smart” Bomb Against Prostate Cancer, Lutetium-177. Just a little background regarding this treatment, in 1991, Operation Desert Storm brought the first large scale use of missile-type bombs that carried precision guidance systems, or “smart” bombs. These bombs could hit targets with great accuracy while collateral damage to civilians was greatly reduced. Now there is a new approach using smart bomb principles to treating metastatic prostate cancer that no longer responds to hormones or chemotherapy. Kam is grateful to have been able to receive this limited experimental treatment that is still in clinical trial in the United States. The regular price for this type of treatment is up to $1 million and a trip to Germany.
In a telephone conversation with him last week, I learned that Kam had almost been paralyzed, in that his cancer had moved to inside his spine. It was not easy for him to be chosen as a recipient of this treatment in which so few would receive in the U.S.; but, he gives credit to doctors at John Hopkins and to Ben Carson, former neurosurgeon and current Unite States Secretary of HUD, whom he had interviewed several times, for helping to pave the way for him to receive this form of treatment.
Yes, Kam has been battling this cancer for several years now but he continued his work with The Mississippi Link submitting his columns, interviews and other content referred to as “ Kam’s Kapsules.” He never used his illness as an excuse for being late or not submitting his work. He has had treatments that worked for a while and some that seemed not to work at all. But today he is hopeful, he has faith, and his work as a journalist continues. He looks forward to the day when he will be restored to good health.
With Kam in mind, we look forward to serving this community and this state with more vigor than ever before. And to Kam Williams and others that are working through life’s challenges, let us be ever-mindful of the words of the late minister, Rev. Robert H. Schuller, “Tough Times Never Last But Tough People Do.” We wish our readers, subscribers, and advertisers a blessed and prosperous 2019!
Be the first to comment