My parents have certainly had their troubles, and as their child I'll never know how they made it to 38 years of marriage. They loved each other, but they didn't seem to like each other very much. Dad was too fond of his beer, and he talked down to Mom a lot. When she tried to stand up to him, a fight would unavoidably follow.

It was my dad's disease that began to change things. The year 1998 was the beginning of a remarkable transformation for my family. My father, Jim Dineen, the always healthy, weightlifting, never-missed-a-day-of-work kind of dad, discovered he had kidney disease.

The decision to go ahead with a transplant for my father was a long and tough one, mostly because he had liver damage too. One physician's assistant told him, "According to your file, you're supposed to be dead." And for a while, doctors mistakenly thought that he would need not just a kidney transplant, but a liver transplant too. _

When the donor testing process finally began in the spring of 2003, numerous people, including me, my uncle Tom, and my mom, came back as matches of varying degree. But Mom was the one who insisted on going further. She decided to donate a kidney to my father. She said she was not scared, and it was the right thing to do. We all stepped back in amazement.

At last a date was chosen - November 11, 2003. All of a sudden, the only thing that seemed to matter Dad was telling the world what a wonderful thing Mom was doing for him. A month before the surgery, he sent her birthday flowers with a note that read, "I love you and I love your kidney! Thank you!"

Financially, the disease was upsetting to them. So my sister and I were humbled and surprised when, shortly before his surgery day, Dad handed us a diamond jewelry that we were to give to Mom after the operation. He'd accumulated his spare dollars to buy it.

At the hospital on the day of the transplant, all our relatives and friends gathered in the waiting room and became involved in a mean euchre tournament. My family has always handled things with a lot of laughter, and even though we were all tense, everybody was taking bets on how long this "change of conduct" would last in my parents.

We would inform Dad that if he chose to act like a real pain on any particular day after the operation, he wasn't allowed to blame it on PMS just because he'd now have a female kidney.

The surgeries went well, and not long afterward, my sister and I were allowed to go in to visit. Dad was in a great deal of pain but again, all he could talk about was Mom. Was she okay? How was she feeling? Then the nurses let us do something unconventional. As they were wheeling Mom out of recovery room, they rolled her into a separate position to visit Dad. It was strange to see both my parents hooked up to IVs and machines and trying to talk to each other through tears. The nurses allowed us to present the diamond jewelry to Mom so that Dad could watch her open it. Everyone was crying, even the nurses.

As I stood with digital camera in hand, I tried to keep the presence of mind to document the moment. My dad was having a hard time fighting back emotion, and suddenly my parents unexpectedly reached out to hold each other's hands.

In my nearly 35 years of existence, I'd never seen my parents do that, and I was spellbound. I snapped a picture and later rushed home to make sure I'd captured that enormous, life-defining moment. After so many years of disagreement, it was apparent to me that they finally understood how much each loved the other. What are the answers to this following set of questions: 1. How long has mom and dad been married?
2. Who was too fond of beer?
3. Did he treat mom with respect?
4. What kind of disease did dad have?
5. When did he get the disease?
6. What was his name?
7. Did they want to go along with a tranplant?
8. When did they start testing donors?
9. Did more than one person come back as a match?
10. Who ultimately gave their kidney to the dad?
Answer: 1. 38 years
2. His dad
3. no
4. kidney disease.
5. 1998
6. Jim Dineen
7. Yes but is was a tough decision
8. the spring of 2003
9. yes
10. His mom did

question: Our brains work in complex and strange ways. There are some people who can calculate the day of the week for any given date in 40,000 years, but who cannot add two plus two. Others can perform complex classical piano pieces after hearing them once, but they cannot read or write.

Dr. J. Langdon Down first described this condition in 1887. He called these people idiot savants. An idiot savant is a person who has significant mental injury, such as in autism or retardation. At the same time, the person also exhibits some extraordinary skills, which are unusual for most people. The skills of the savant may vary from being exceptionally gifted in music or in mathematics, or having a photographic memory.

One of the first descriptions of a human who could calculate quickly was written in 1789 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, an American doctor. His patient, Thomas Fuller, was brought to Virginia as a slave in 1724. It took Thomas only 90 seconds to work out that a man who has lived 70 years, 17 days, and 12 hours has lived 2,210,500,800 seconds. Despite this ability, he died in 1790 without ever learning to read or write.

Another idiot savant slave became famous as a pianist in the 1860s. Blind Tom had a vocabulary of only 100 words, but he played 5,000 musical pieces beautifully.

In the excellent movie Rain Man, made in 1988 and available on video cassette, Dustin Hoffman plays an idiot savant who amazes his brother played by Tom Cruise, with his ability to perform complex calculations very rapidly.

Today we more clearly recognize that the idiot savant is special because of brain impairment. Yet not all brain injury leads to savant skills. Some studies have shown that people who have purposeful interruption of the left side of the brain can develop idiot savant skills. However few people wish to participate in such experiments. There are many excellent reasons for not undergoing unnecessary experimentation on one's brain. The term idiot savant is outdated and inappropriate. Virtually all savants have a high degree of intelligence and are thus not idiots.
1. What are idiot savants?
2. What type of skills?
3. Anything else?
4. And?
5. Who wrote about a human that could calculate fast?
6. What was his profession?
7. Where was he from?
8. What year did he write about this person?
9. What was his patient's name?
10. Was he a free man?
11. Was he literate?
12. Who became famous as a pianist?
13. How many words did he know?
14. How many music pieces could he play?
15. What actor played Rain Man?
16. What was his amazing skill?
17. Does all brain injury leads to savant skills?
18. Do many people wish to participate in experiments to determine idiot savant?
19. Does the author like the term idiot savant?
20. Why not?
****
answer:
1. a person who has significant mental injury but has extraordinary skills
2. gifted in music
3. mathematics
4. having a photographic memory
5. Dr. Benjamin Rush
6. doctor
7. America
8. 1789
9. Thomas Fuller
10. no
11. no
12. Blind Tom
13. 100
14. 5,000
15. Dustin Hoffman
16. he performed complex calculations very rapidly
17. no
18. No
19. no
20. savants have a high degree of intelligence and are thus not idiots