Ex-Providence College standout basketball player Ray Johnson, at home in South Kingstown, refuses to let his health problems define him.

The Journal / GLENN OSMUNDSON

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — At first glance, it seems a strange place to come looking for someone who once was the most dominant Rhode Island high school basketball player I ever saw. Someone who, even at 62, still looks as if he could take a few snaps with the Patriots, 6-foot-7 and rock-hard strong.

But this is where Ray Johnson is on this beautiful morning, hooked up to a dialysis machine here in this building in Wakefield, only about a jump shot away from where he once led South Kingstown to back-to-back state titles back in the mid-’60s, back when he never lost a high school game in two seasons.

He is lying back on a recliner, a green blanket covering him. There is a small television over his head. Two needles are stuck into his right arm. Red wires go from his arm to a blocky machine that cleans his blood and sends it back to him.

He’s been doing this three times a week for the past year and a half, ever since he discovered that his kidneys were operating at 30-percent efficiency and one must be replaced. Three times a week for 4 hours and 10 minutes.

“It’s like a flight to Tampa,” he says with a laugh.

But don’t feel sorry for Ray Johnson.

He doesn’t feel sorry for himself.

“It’s all about how you approach the game,” he says.

For this is not about his illness. This is about how he deals with his illness. It’s about his attitude, and the reason he has the attitude he does.

And maybe most of all, it’s about lessons for all of us.

“This is the hand I’ve been dealt,” he says with a shrug.

These are not just empty words.

Johnson, who once was both a teacher and a counselor, has worked nights for the past two decades at the R.I. Training School. Sometimes he works all night, does his four hours of dialysis in the morning, then drives back to Cranston and works an overtime shift. On the days he doesn’t go to dialysis, he works out religiously at the South County Y, something he’s done since he was in the seventh grade.

“I live my life,” he says. “Dialysis is just something I have to do. Like going to work, going to the store, doing errands. It doesn’t define my life, and I don’t wake up thinking about it.”

So how did he get this way?

“I prepared myself,” he says. “I geared myself up for dialysis. You have to talk to yourself, teach yourself. I would have been broken a long time ago if I had let things get to me. To me, coming here to dialysis is like going to a game. You have to be prepared, and you have to be positive. It’s all about how you approach it.”

It took him a couple of days a couple of years ago to get over the shock of the news that he had something called polycystic kidneys, something his father also had, even though no one ever knew it until he died. When he was first diagnosed with it, a doctor told him that maybe he should put off lifting weights for a month or so.

Sorry, doc, he told him. Three days tops.

Johnson believes that two things help him now, one being the discipline he learned as a kid playing basketball, both in high school in South Kingstown, later at Providence College, where he was a starter for three years, one of the handful of local kids who have ever done that.

In a sense, it’s the simple lessons you learn as an athlete, even if you don’t know you are learning them: showing up every day, showing up with a positive attitude, the basic things. Maybe more important, it’s the realization that there are good days and bad days, and it’s what you do in the bad days that’s most important.

Those are the lessons that help him now, the realization that you cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude about what happens to you.

On this morning, he is sitting in one corner of a spacious, light-filled room. There are 19 other patients, all hooked up to similar machines.

“I try to stay upbeat,” he says. “Joke with people. Carry on. I try to make the best of this.”

He knows that many people on dialysis go home and take a nap after it, wiped out by the procedure.

Not him.

Because the other thing that he knows has helped him?

His physical conditioning.

It’s something that’s always been a big part of his life, even since he was a kid. For years, he worked construction in the summer for a friend, pouring cement, in addition to his real job. It’s the way he grew up, seeing his father work two jobs, work as a way of life. He’s always liked physical things, running, lifting weights, work as discipline.

That was always the little irony, the fact that he liked working out better than he liked basketball. So unlike other ex-players, who never seem to find a second act after their playing days are over, Johnson never had that problem. His second act was working out, something he’s never stopped doing.

“All those years of working out are paying off,” he says.

The machine he’s hooked up to makes little noises. Johnson is oblivious to them. He says it doesn’t hurt. The blood leaves his body, comes back. For 4 hours and 10 minutes.

“I don’t worry about a lot of stuff anymore,” he says, “and I don’t take anything for granted.”

And where is he going when his 4 hours and 10 minutes are done?

“I’m going to the beach,” says Ray Johnson. “It’s a beautiful day.”

breynold@projo.com