Inauguration Day at least provided a distraction. I had enjoyed speaking on behalf of Senator Kennedy during his campaign and was thrilled at his election. Now, lying on my living-room floor in Buffalo simultaneously watching television and listening to the radio, I regained some of my enthusiasm. Then, as this promising, bright young president concluded his address, I heard words that seemed to outline the specter of my future:
“Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need—not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.”
I arose from the floor and heard nothing more; my mind turned inward as I stumbled upstairs in the half light to my bedroom. I was restless and exhausted, but sleep was no comfort. I had been brought low by one of those enemies President Kennedy had mentioned. In the years since, I have not forgotten those words of the president.
Certain dates in one’s life are never forgotten. One for me is Monday, February 13, 1961—the day of the scheduled appointment with Dr. Sugar in Detroit.
My mother and I took the train from Buffalo to Detroit, checked into the Detroit Statler Hotel, then went directly to Dr. Sugar’s office. It was late in the afternoon. The doctor’s other patients had left, and we were ushered into his office immediately.
The venetian blinds were open, the sun of a cold winter day streaming in. Dr. Sugar measured my eye pressure using what he explained was an electronic tonograph machine. When he discovered that the pressure in my eyes was so high that it could not even register precisely on the machine, he was outraged. “Why did they wait so long?” he shouted. “Why did they wait so long?”
It did not occur to me until later to think about who the “they” were and what it was “they” waited so long to do. Because I couldn’t see, I could not read my mother’s face. But I can imagine her expression was just as confused as mine.
Dr. Sugar then guided me from the examination table to a small, round metal stool. My mother sat in a wooden chair to my right while Dr. Sugar stood above me and put his ophthalmoscope to my eyes. His brow was touching my brow. This man had the hairiest, bushiest eyebrows I’d ever seen. Though, of course, I could only feel them. And then he pulled away—I could feel him do this, like a ripping apart. Very slowly he stood upright, paused for a moment, and said flatly, not in the direction of my mother or me in particular, maybe just to himself:
“Well, son, you are going to be blind tomorrow.”
It was a strange thing to hear someone say. Strange that he used the old-fashioned colloquialism “son,” and without really directing the remark to me. But oddest of all was to hear a person say, in all seriousness, that someone is simply going to be blind. He did not explain how this person was going to be blind, just that he was. And maybe odder still was that the person—the “son”—was me.
Although I suppose Dr. Sugar continued to speak, after that sentence I heard nothing. He was the ultimate judge in my brand-new world. Any appeal beyond him would be futile. I had always assumed—as young people nowadays do—that a top specialist such as Dr. Sugar would be able to solve my problem with pills or eye drops or…something. A quick fix, then back to college. For months, with the arrogance of youth, I had leaned on that absurd rationalization and had taken no action to resolve my worsening eye condition. But in one instant, Dr. Sugar had blasted that confidence away. “You are going to be blind tomorrow.” My life—all that I had been working at and was expecting to become—was ruined.
Enraged, I clenched my fists and began rising from the stool. My body twisted toward Dr. Sugar. My right arm, the arm that had once thrown the shot put, was now positioned for what might have been a blow to his face. Fortunately, probably because my mother was there, I hesitated, and then sat back down. Meanwhile, my mother sat quietly in her chair. What thoughts were racing through her mind? Her years of sacrifice must certainly have dissipated in that same terrible moment of the surgeon’s statement. Her eldest son had just been consigned to life in a dark world.
I sat frozen on the stool, clasping my stomach. No one spoke for long moments. It could not be happening to me—I would not let it. As Dr. Sugar began outlining his clinical plan, my body stiffened.
“I don’t like to operate on both eyes at once,” he said, “but because of the severity of your condition, I must. Surgery will be scheduled for tomorrow.” At that, he left the office.
We hadn’t even thought to ask what operation he would be performing. At any rate, I could not have asked him in front of my mother. We gathered our belongings and went back to the hotel. Drained, I moved slowly toward my bed. As I began to sit down, I suddenly realized that I had misjudged the bed’s position. I could not stop my fall. My back hit the floor, then my head.
The next day—Valentine’s Day—I was admitted to Detroit Sinai Hospital, accompanied by my mother. Shortly before the operation was to begin, two large men strapped me onto a gurney and began wheeling me out, leaving her behind in my hospital room. As cold air rushed over my face, I heard the orderlies saying that because of my age, this was an unusual case. Glaucoma seldom occurs in people as young as nineteen, so the film that
