Carolyn Jourdan - Heart in the Right Place

A beautiful memoir.... Making a difference can be as simple as getting up in the morning and helping those around you.

Family Circle

Heartwarming and hilarious.... Youll fall in love with this story about family, community, and coming home... reminding us that the best heroes are the ones living right beside us!

The Satellite Sisters Radio Show

Be prepared to laugh out loud, to empathize, to admire when you read this real story of science and heart and compassion.

The State (Columbia, SC)

Both tragic and laugh-out-loud moments, even some romance, with a little bit of moral thrown in.

Elle

This is a soul-touching memoir filled with memorable Southern characters, plus plenty of country humor, but mostly a memoir about characterthe transformative power of selfless acts in forgotten places far from the spotlight.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Heartwarming, funny, and utterly appealing.

Fannie Flagg

An absolute delight of a book: warm, funny and written with great heart and understanding.

BookPage

A keen eye for what is heroic and extraordinary about the seemingly ordinary sets Jourdans writing apart and gives her new book insight and meaning.

Gwendolyn Bounds, author of Little Chapel on the River

A stirring, beautiful memoir that is alternately hilarious and heartbreaking, and ultimately a triumph.

Publishers Weekly, starred review

This is a sort of not-to-be-missed All Creatures Great and Small of the Appalachians, except most of the creatures are human.... A wondrous glimpse of a dying mountain culture and the dying art of the family practitioner-surgeon.

Tampa Tribune

I have been recommending this book to friends telling them some of the humorous anecdotes within, but it is the deeper meaning that will keep this story in my memory.

The Des Moines Register

Jourdans tone is heartfelt without being preachy and frequently funny without being trite.... Readers struggling to reconcile their practices with their beliefs will find Jourdans memoir to be as much a blueprint for change as it is a satisfying recollection of one persons journey to fulfillment.

The Louisville Courier-Journal

This is a wonderful book. I would have enjoyed it even if Carolyn wasnt a neighbor of mine in East Tennessee. She is a great writer.

Dolly Parton

With lavish affection, genuine respect, and exuberant humor, Jourdan offers a zestfully compassionate portrait of a poor community rich in the ways of true humanity.

Booklist

Packed with humor, wit and tenderness.... Jourdan introduces readers to a whole town of unforgettable peoplesome eccentric, some desperate, some naive, some truly heroic.

Rocky Mount (NC) Telegram

The truths in the telling of a caring country doctor will leave the reader with unforgettable thoughts.... A great gift for both Fathers Day and Mothers Day.

News Chief (Winter Haven, FL)

Alternately funny and heartbreaking.

Decatur (AL) Daily

A wonderful read.

Litchfield (CT) Enquirer

An absorbing account of a personal journey.... Will make you laugh, question, and give thanks.

Tennessee Bar Journal

Heart in the Right Place does for the medical community what James Herriotts classic All Creatures Great and Small did for the veterinary one. A blend of science and soul, the story of the Jourdan familys devotion to their rural community is one of compassion, wisdom, and wit. A beautiful, compelling true story.

Marty Becker, DVM, resident veterinarian on ABCs Good Morning America

This book proves that yes, you can go home again and that quality of life is much better than quantity in life! Five diamonds in the tiara.

Kathy Patrick, The Pulpwood Queen, SouthernLiving.com

BY

Carolyn Jourdan

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2007 by Carolyn Jourdan. All rights reserved.

First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, August 2008.

Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2007.

Printed in the United States of America.

Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited.

Design by Anne Winslow.

Because this book depicts real events and actual medical situations, some characters have been altered for the purpose of protecting their privacy and certain chronologies have been altered for simplicity.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jourdan, Carolyn, 1955

Heart in the right place / by Carolyn Jourdan.1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-487-5 (HC)

1. Jourdan, Carolyn, 1955 2. Medical assistantsTennesseeBiography. 3. United States Congress SenateOfficials and employeesBiography. 4. TennesseeBiography. I. Title.

CT275.J88A3 2007

976.8053092dc22

[B] 2006028421

ISBN-13: 978-1-56512-613-8 (PB)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Paperback Edition

Heart in the Right Place

YOULL NEVER SEE ANYTHING like this again, Daddy said as he stooped to hold an x-ray between my face and the sunlight streaming in through his office window. He pointed to a shadowy gray blob near the center of a small rib cage.

See? he said. This little girls hearts on the wrong side. Its on the right.

I stared at the film, trying to appreciate what I was seeing. The silhouette of a little skeleton surrounded by vague swirls of silver mists and fogs looked okay to me, but I was only ten years old and trusted Daddy, a family doctor, to know which way the picture, and the heart, should go.

When I didnt say anything, Daddy said, You could go a whole lifetime without ever seeing this even once, because its so rare.

I wasnt sure, but I suspected this would be a good thing not to ever get to see again, because even though Daddy hadnt said so, I got the distinct impression that this was a very bad thing for the little girl. I touched my own chest as I struggled to understand what the backwards configuration meant. But all I could think to say was, How does she say the Pledge?

For days I wrestled with the girls problem by asking Daddy variations of the same question, What does she do when they play The Star Spangled Banner?... Where does she cross and hope to die? I couldnt get over it. Left was right and right was wrong. What did it mean?

Thirty years later, the image still haunted me.

What point was God trying to make with the little girls life?

Hed been more merciful with me. Despite my early fears that my destiny was to spend my entire life as an utterly powerless witness to one medical disaster after another, Id eventually grown up and landed a good job in a city far from the mountains of East Tennessee, neatly sidestepping my role as spectator to any more catastrophes. Or so Id thought.

AS I UNLOCKED the front door of the office I could hear the phone ringing. I hurried inside and stretched across the reception desk to answer it.

Dr. Jourdans office, I said, out of breath.

Do yall wash out feet? a woman shouted.

I considered her question. Although I was accustomed to the local dialect and even to garbled medical terminology, I had no idea what she meant. I said, Excuse me? and quickly moved the earpiece a safe distance away from my head before she had time to respond.