Product Description

Illness came calling when Richard M. Cohen was twenty-five years old. He was a young television news producer with expectations of a limitless future, and his foreboding that his health was not quite right turned into the harsh reality that something was very wrong when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For thirty years Cohen has done battle with MS, only to be ambushed by two bouts of colon cancer at the end of the millennium. And yet, he has writ-ten a hopeful book about celebrating life and coping with chronic illness.

"Welcome to my world," writes Cohen, "where I carry around dreams, a few diseases, and the determination to live life my way. This book is my daily conversation with myself, a chronicle of the struggles in that exotic place just north of the neck. At the moment, my attitude checks out well. I do believe I'm winning."

Autobiographical at its roots, reportorial, and expansive, Blindsided explores the effects of illness on raising three children and on his relationship with his wife, Meredith Vieira (host of ABC's The View and the syndicated Who Wants To Be A Millionaire). Cohen tackles the nature of denial and resilience, the ins and outs of the struggle for emotional health, and the redemptive effects of a loving family.And while he may not have chosen to live with illness, illness did choose him. Written with grace, humor, and lyrical prose, Blindsided presents a life brimming over with accomplishment and joy in adversity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #525248 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01-30
• Released on: 2004-01-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 256 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In 1972, when he was 25, Cohen, an up-and-coming television journalist, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a disease for which there is no cure. In this wrenching memoir, he tells how he has for the past 30 years succeeded in his determination to "cope and to hope." For a long time, he hid his condition from friends and co-workers, taking on dangerous assignments for CBS in Poland, Lebanon and El Salvador even though his mobility and vision were impaired. He became a senior producer at CBS, and although he eventually quit the station in 1987 because he felt it was pandering to commercial and political pressures, he worked as a producer for PBS, CNN and Fox until he left TV in the late 1990s to become a writer and teacher. In spite of his illness, he also married and had three children. He nearly lost his courage in 1999 when he learned that he had colon cancer, but after two operations and the realization that despair and anger would drive his family away, he come to grips with this, too. In painful detail, he chronicles the progress of multiple sclerosis - the increasing numbness in his hands and legs and the resultant falls, loss of vision to the point where he is now legally blind and, lately, mental confusion. Nevertheless, he writes: "These pages are not about suffering.... This book is about surviving and flourishing, rising above fear and self-doubt and, of course, anger." His wife, Meredith Vieira, a well-known television personality, has been portrayed in popular magazines as a martyr who bears a terrible burden. Cohen proves that nothing could be further from the truth. First serial rights to People magazine.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
In his mid-twenties, Cohen was an up-and-coming television journalist. He had been covering the Nixon presidency and was working on a documentary series hosted by Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer. Then he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an affliction his father had been battling for decades, and he has spent the last 30 years discovering all sorts of interesting and frightening things about himself. Blindness came as something of a shock, waking up one morning and no longer being able to see out of his right eye (although the impaired vision didn't stop him from reporting on fighting in Beirut and El Salvador in the early '80s). Then there were the operations, the cancer diagnoses, the progressive physical deterioration. But, despite all this, Cohen's story is an uplifting one, primarily because he has such a realistic take on his own life. In the latter part of the book, he writes with great joy about his wife (television host Meredith Viera) and his children; ultimately, his is a story of overcoming adversity and not being beaten by it--a traditional-enough theme for a book, perhaps, but still an important one, if told in the right way. It is here. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“With aplomb and high character [Cohen] lays out…lessons in unflappable prose…. A sharp and affecting piece of perspective-setting.” (Kirkus Reviews )

“I cannot remember ever being more profoundly moved by any book I have ever read.…Don’t miss this book.” (Beverly Sills )

“[Blindsided] paints an incredibly sharp picture of what it is like to live passionately—with joy, love, and anger.” (Dr. Harold Varmus, President, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and Former Director, National Institutes of Health )

“Blindsided is beautifully written and utterly honest. May we all be so brave and caring in our own families.” (Tom Brokaw )

“Eloquent and brutally honest.” (Seattle Times )

“A powerful and agonizingly frank description of a life with which many chronically ill people and their families will identify.” (Library Journal (starred review) )

“[A] powerful memoir, tough in the way Cohen’s old news bosses would have wanted it to be tough.” (New York Times Book Review )

“...a warm, sarcastic, unflinching dissection of love, pain, laughter and wounded pride.” (Chicago Tribune )