Beloved Professor Returns to Campus
Issue date: 2/3/10 Section: News
By Ashley Bowles
Rotunda Reporter
"I thought it would be like going to the dentist…you'll go to the office, and they'll say 'Come on in,' and you'll get a shot of Novocaine and it'll make you numb, and then they'll do it and it won't hurt, and then you'll go home and you won't be able to chew on that side for a while and then it'll be OK," said Dr. James Jordan.
After 128 e-mails and 60 "snail mail" letters of "Get well soon, can't wait for you to get back" and "Hope you don't die" from students, colleagues and others, Dr. James Jordan, professor of anthropology and Longwood's resident ghost story teller, has returned to his Longwood University home after surgery for prostate cancer. Jordan was diagnosed in late summer 2009 and made a formal announcement to Longwood right before fall break. He delayed the surgery until the end of the fall semester to avoid missing his classes. He also had to cancel his and Dr. Brian Bates' - department chair of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice studies - annual study abroad trip to England because Jordan's doctor and Bates advised against it since the trip would be just three weeks after the surgery.
On a sunny winter afternoon, Jordan sits down in his skull-filled office and recounts his diagnosis and ongoing recovery. "I lived, I lived through it. There was some doubt the last time you and I spoke but I lived through the darn thing… I didn't think I was going to… I was really pretty scared but it all happened. In fact it was seven weeks ago at this very moment that I was lying someplace on a gurney, split open like a stuck pig," recalled Jordan. Jordan demonstrated that at 49 days out of surgery he was indeed "ambulatory and taking fluids" by walking to get his mug of green tea. "I'm not back 100 percent yet, don't have all my sails hoisted on the mast and I'm a little bit slow but everything is fine."
With the cancelation of the intersession trip to England, Jordan spent the holiday season a little differently this year. "My family came here and spent Christmas with me. I laid about a great deal of the time...my daughters kept coming home all the time…ya know, cooking and taking care of me and things like that… in my freezer I have more food than I've ever had in my life. If it snowed on Farmville today and the snow was six feet over the tops of the houses, I would be able to eat out of my freezer from now until Easter; I have that much food, I probably possess the largest collection of Tupperware in Prince Edward County."
Rotunda Reporter
"I thought it would be like going to the dentist…you'll go to the office, and they'll say 'Come on in,' and you'll get a shot of Novocaine and it'll make you numb, and then they'll do it and it won't hurt, and then you'll go home and you won't be able to chew on that side for a while and then it'll be OK," said Dr. James Jordan.
After 128 e-mails and 60 "snail mail" letters of "Get well soon, can't wait for you to get back" and "Hope you don't die" from students, colleagues and others, Dr. James Jordan, professor of anthropology and Longwood's resident ghost story teller, has returned to his Longwood University home after surgery for prostate cancer. Jordan was diagnosed in late summer 2009 and made a formal announcement to Longwood right before fall break. He delayed the surgery until the end of the fall semester to avoid missing his classes. He also had to cancel his and Dr. Brian Bates' - department chair of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice studies - annual study abroad trip to England because Jordan's doctor and Bates advised against it since the trip would be just three weeks after the surgery.
On a sunny winter afternoon, Jordan sits down in his skull-filled office and recounts his diagnosis and ongoing recovery. "I lived, I lived through it. There was some doubt the last time you and I spoke but I lived through the darn thing… I didn't think I was going to… I was really pretty scared but it all happened. In fact it was seven weeks ago at this very moment that I was lying someplace on a gurney, split open like a stuck pig," recalled Jordan. Jordan demonstrated that at 49 days out of surgery he was indeed "ambulatory and taking fluids" by walking to get his mug of green tea. "I'm not back 100 percent yet, don't have all my sails hoisted on the mast and I'm a little bit slow but everything is fine."
With the cancelation of the intersession trip to England, Jordan spent the holiday season a little differently this year. "My family came here and spent Christmas with me. I laid about a great deal of the time...my daughters kept coming home all the time…ya know, cooking and taking care of me and things like that… in my freezer I have more food than I've ever had in my life. If it snowed on Farmville today and the snow was six feet over the tops of the houses, I would be able to eat out of my freezer from now until Easter; I have that much food, I probably possess the largest collection of Tupperware in Prince Edward County."
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