By Steve Blow

Sunday, November 25, 2007

So you think you have faced a few challenges in this life? Trust me, you don't want to start comparing with Jody Mackling. Her mother abandoned her when she was 6. And her father? "Never met him." She was raised in Bowie, northwest of Fort Worth, by dirt-poor grandparents in a ramshackle old house.

Her grandfather died when she was 10. Her little brother drowned when she was 11. Her grandmother soon fell ill, so she went to live with a second cousin.

Oh, and when she was 8, Jody's liver failed. She tried to fix her yellowing eyes with Visine, but it took a grueling liver transplant and months of care at Children's Medical Center to save her life.

But if you think this is a poor-pitiful-Jody story, forget it.

This is actually a good-news update to a good-news story of 11 years ago. That's when my former colleague, Nancy Kruh, introduced us to Jody, who was then an irrepressible 18-year-old named Jody Bell.

The headline back then said it well: "The Unsinkable Jody Bell."

The story was not only about Jody's remarkable spirit but also about how the whole Bowie area had rallied around her. A huge fundraising effort had made her liver transplant possible.

And the story was written just as Jody was heading off to Texas Woman's University, carrying the pride and scholarships of her hometown with her.

Suffice to say, the community's investment in Jody paid off nicely.

Today, Jody can barely believe it when she gives her age. "I don't feel 30," she said. "It's hard to believe. I still feel 20."

Five years ago, she married Flower Mound firefighter and paramedic Tim Mackling.

So Jody is all grown up now, but she's still impressing people with her upbeat spirit and growing list of accomplishments.

Back when she was an 8-year-old patient at Children's Medical Center, she set her sights on returning there one day as a nurse.

For anyone else, that might have faded away as a childhood fancy. But not for Jody.

She actually landed a job at Children's as a radiology file clerk while still in college. She worked her way up to nurse's aide. Then, when she graduated, she went to work at Children's as a full-fledged registered nurse.

But she wasn't done yet. She went on to earn a master's degree in nursing and certification as a nurse practitioner.

She now works on a specialized team in the gastroenterology department at Children's. And she continues her studies for advanced certification in acute pediatric care.

"Oh, she's fabulous," said nurse practitioner Barbie Drews, who was one of Jody's transplant nurses 22 years ago and now works alongside her on the same team at Children's.

"She's so smart. She has done all this herself," Ms. Drews said. "There's something in her that is a survivor.

"And," she added, "sometimes it's shocking to turn around and look at her now and see that little smile I remember from when she was 8."

In her sweet, demure way, Jody shrugs off acclaim over her life story. "It seems so ordinary to me. It just seems normal," she said.

And maybe part of her secret is that, even in the midst of such childhood hardship, she still felt happy and hopeful.

She credits her grandparents with that. "They were just wonderful, salt-of-the-earth people. They taught good basic values like hard work and being happy with what you have, even if it might not be much," she said.

Odd as it sounds, she says her liver failure was the best thing that ever happened to her – introducing her to a wider world and instilling that dream to be a nurse.

"If not for that, chances are I'd still be in Bowie, working at the Dairy Queen," she laughed.

For Jody, it may seem just an ordinary life. But for others, it's an inspiration.

"Because of her," said Ms. Drews, "we know anything is possible."