Thanks to Lene, I looked up Richard M. Cohen‘s book, “Strong At The Broken Places,” and reading the reviews, ended up ordering it and also his earlier one, “Blindsided.” They arrived this past week, and I’ve been having a hard time putting them down.
I knew Cohen’s name from his political column. I had not associated it with MS. “Blindsided” is his story of being diagnosed with it at 25 just when he was finding success as a TV news producer. Vision loss was one of his first symptoms.
He mentions an assignment in Lebanon early on where he found himself in an argument with someone while he was standing apart from his camera crew, who, when he walked back over to them, were stunned, going, how could you be yelling at that guy with all those guns aimed at your head!
Guns?
He’d been too blind to see them.
He writes of his anger and frustration at the disease, and yet of his joy at being married to Meredith Viera and at the arrivals of their children. It comes out over and over again, in both books: while he freely admits how hard he and his disease are and have been on them, they are his strength and his way of getting through the day okay.
Over and over, I’ve been finding myself wanting to exclaim out loud, Yes! THIS is what it’s like! YES!
One moment that so hit home for me was the day he was walking down the street in New York City and suddenly found himself ducking on impulse into a shop that sold canes. No doctor had told him to, he says; he had resisted it for so long and had stumbled so much; but it simply was time. And that was that.
I spent a year after my car accident demanding that my brain relearn how to navigate the world. It would be awhile longer before the various ways in which it had been damaged became more clear. One eye saw normally; to the other, everything bright was very near and everything dull was far, and the cacophony would argue and throw me overboard if too much visual information was incoming–my left side would simply collapse. But I was determined to progress in my recovery.
It took a year. One day it was simply finally enough. Now. I walked into the orthopedic place a few blocks away and bought my first cane, impressed at a man there who knew his trade and how long to cut it based on whether I needed it for support for a leg, or balance?… And do you usually wear shoes of this height of heel? Ah. This long, then.
I had not expected to immediately find someone who knew what it was like, in a way, to be me as I was now. It was a quietly stunning moment.
I’d been so worried about the stigma. What I hadn’t realized was how much of my freedom that cane would give me back, how much I’d avoided, how many places I hadn’t gone and things I hadn’t done because I couldn’t walk upright through crowds or visually noisy places without stumbling badly (or worse). My children had become protective of me, offering me an arm to give me the tactile feedback that kept me from falling.
And now I could manage on my own, poof, just like that. I wondered how many people had thought this good little Mormon was drunk so many times that past year. Stigma? Gimme the cane already, I’ve got places to go.
And on and on as I read “Blindsided” I continued to relate to this story and that. My lupus and his MS, my Crohn’s and his colon cancer. Although I had to chuckle a tad ruefully; ileostomy? Dude, I’ll show you ileostomy. Yours was temporary.
Cohen’s writing really blossoms in the second book (which I forced myself to put down halfway through to come write this). In it, he’s not being as self-conscious about exposing himself, but rather he’s reporting more on the stories of others with chronic illnesses who chose to share their lives with him.
We truly do become strong at the broken places. Especially when we see each other–and ourselves–for who we are despite their getting in the way.