In His Blood

By John M. Glionna, Desert Companion, January 1, 2020

NEEDLES, Calif. — Three afternoons a week, Mayor Jeff Williams drops his work at City Hall and makes the half-hour trip into Arizona for a critical appointment he knows he cannot miss — not even once. At these times he doesn’t meet with bureaucrats. There are no sessions with chamber of commerce, water, or air-quality officials, although he sits on all those community boards, and more.

With his doting 75-year-old mother, Deloris, playing chauffeur, Williams visits a medical clinic in Bullhead City, wincing as a nurse sticks him with a needle “the size of a garden hose” and the ominous machine by his side begins to whirr. For three hours, he undergoes an exhausting kidney dialysis procedure that drains, cleans, and replaces all the blood in his body. When he’s finally done, the 55-year-old Oklahoma native is so weary it’s difficult to stand.

Then his mother drives him straight home, where he has a quick dinner, puts on his pajamas, and drops into bed.

Or not. Sometimes, there are meetings to attend, people to meet, responsibilities he can’t ignore. The mayor never complains, even after three long years of the same tiring drill. Williams has kidney cancer. Not only that, he’s suffered from pancreatitis, pneumonia, and heart and kidney failure that has nearly killed him.

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