Robot Check. Enter the characters you see below. Sorry, we just need to make sure you're not a robot. For best results, please make sure your browser is accepting cookies. Francis Hotel. The 4. Kay Gallagher Award for mentoring the blind, an award he'd won himself the previous year. Dozens in the audience knew his history: blinded at age three by a freak accident; three- time Paralympics gold medalist and current world record holder in downhill speed skiing; entrepreneur on the verge of bringing a portable global positioning system (GPS) to the blind; coinventor of the world's first laser turntable; mud hut dweller in Ghana; husband to a beautiful blond wife (in attendance and dressed in a tight black top, short black skirt, and black high heels); loving father; former CIA man. People watched the way May moved. He walked with a quiet dignity, effortlessly negotiating the obstacle course of banquet tables and chairs, smiling at those he passed, shaking hands along the way. There was more than mobility in his step; his gait seemed free of regret, his body language devoid of longing. Most of the people in this room worked with the blind every day, so they knew what it looked like for a person to yearn for vision. May looked like he was exactly who he wanted to be. He was accustomed to public speaking, and his messages were always inspiring. But every so often a member of the audience would turn on him, and it usually came at the same part of his talk, the part when he said, . But life without vision is great, too. May was always polite, always let the person finish his thought. Then, in the warm but definite way in which he'd spoken since childhood, he would say, . But for me, life is great. Instead, the tall and handsome May spoke glowingly about the award winner, about how much it had meant to him to win the Gallagher, and about the importance of mentoring. He seasoned his talk with jokes, some tried and true, others off the cuff, all to good effect. Then he presented the honoree with a plaque and a check and returned to his seat. When he sat down, his wife, Jennifer, told him, . You look beautiful in that suit. And that was a lovely talk. Ordinarily, they would have awoken and made the seventy- five- mile drive to their home in Davis, California, each needing to return to work. But Jennifer's contact lenses had been bothering her, so she had scheduled an appointment with a San Francisco optometrist. Though May was itching to get back to his home office, he agreed to accompany Jennifer to the appointment. The morning was glorious as the couple strolled San Francisco and enjoyed that rarest of pleasures, an unhurried weekday breakfast at a streetside caf. Jennifer assured him that the visit would take no more than thirty minutes. May had never accompanied his wife to an eye appointment and was pleasantly surprised to learn that they would be out so quickly. The waiting room grabbed Jennifer's attention straightaway. An interior designer, she lived in a world of color and flow, and she began describing it to May: the direction the chairs faced, the narrowing of the hallway that led to the exam rooms, the taupe of the wall behind the receptionist. Carson examined Jennifer, recorded some measurements, and told her he would write her a new contact lens prescription. May was glad that things had gone so quickly. He looked at May for a few seconds, made another note in Jennifer's file, then looked back at May. He asked how long it had been since May had seen an eye doctor. His right eye, his natural eye, was nearly opaque and all white, evidence of dense corneal scarring. No pupil or color could be seen at all. Some blind people wear dark glasses to conceal such an eye, but May had never felt the need to do so. His eyelid drooped a bit, leaving his eye mostly closed, so no one reacted badly to it. Carson stepped away and sat on a stool. Dan Goodman, takes a look at you. He's an ophthalmologist, one of the best in the country. Mike May spent his life crashing through. Blinded at age three, he defied expectations by breaking world records in downhill speed skiing, joining the CIA, and becoming a successful inventor, entrepreneur, and family man. He had never yearned for vision. Then, in 1999, a chance encounter brought. NEW YORK-- A Delta plane from Atlanta skidded off a runway at LaGuardia Airport while landing during a snowstorm Thursday and crashed through a chain-link fence, its nose coming to rest perilously close to the icy waters of a bay. The nose was leaning on a berm that separates the runway from. I think he'd be interested. Jennifer was already wearing the same expression. For a moment neither May nor Jennifer said anything. Then each said to the other, . Goodman, age forty- two, introduced himself and asked May how he'd lost his vision. He'd been my doctor since the accident. After that, he told me that I would never see, I'd be blind forever. He was supposed to be a great ophthalmologist. I sought him out when I was young and asked to do surgery with him on Wednesday nights. He was one of the great ophthalmologists in the world. The stillness of the touch startled May. Goodman's hand stayed absolutely motionless, absent the vaguest hint of tremor. May had felt that kind of touch only once before, from Dr. Fine, who had held his eye open in just the same way. Goodman peered into May's eye. He saw the massive corneal scarring that trademarks a chemical explosion. He shone a penlight into May's eye, which May could barely detect (most blind people have some vague light perception). But when Goodman waved his hand in front of the eye May could not perceive the movement. Goodman conducted a few more tests, then looked through the same biomicroscope Carson had used. It took only moments for him to see that May was totally blind. The exam lasted perhaps five minutes. Goodman turned on the lights and pulled up his stool. But a chemical burn like yours is one of them. She wasn't sure whether to look at Goodman or her husband. What was Goodman saying? Most ophthalmologists in the world haven't done any. It's not something anyone specializes in. And I don't know of anyone who has done one on a patient who has been blind for as long as you've been. But if the B- scan is clean, there's a good chance this could work. His body and brain agreed simultaneously that it was impossible, that once Goodman ran the tests he would see what Dr. Still, the newness of the science intrigued May. Why can't vision technology change, too? But it sets the stage for a cornea transplant three or four months later. If all goes right, the two surgeries add up to vision. Crashin' Through Western . Neitz) Writer: Alan James (as Alvin J. Neitz) Stars: Jack Perrin, Jack Richardson, Steve Clemente House prices crash through the . Crashing Through Danger 1h 10min To Jennifer, something seemed amiss. Vision had always been impossible for May, not because science hadn't caught up to him but because something fundamental was missing or unfixable. Jennifer watched May for his reaction. There was no hallelujah. There were no cries of . Call my office if you'd like to go ahead with the B- scan. It was very nice to meet you. And with that he was out of the room. The encounter had lasted less than ten minutes. After the appointment May and Jennifer were walking back to their red Dodge Caravan, which was still parked near the St. The weather was bright and brisk, and reminded Jennifer of the couple's newlywed days living in San Francisco, when they walked miles for just the right Chinese takeout and talked about their future on the way. I'm already behind on a bunch of business calls. Jennifer found her sunglasses, started the ignition, and pulled out onto Post Street. With good traffic they would be in Davis in an hour and a half. May opened his cell phone and began to return business calls, simultaneously making certain that Jennifer didn't miss the turnoff to Route 8. Though May could not see, he possessed a collection of uncannily accurate mental maps. For a few miles neither said anything. Then Jennifer looked over at May and remarked, . She hadn't had time to begin to sort out the implications of Goodman's offer, but she knew this much: something big had happened, and whatever it meant it was certain to be an intensely personal issue for her husband. For that reason she wanted to say nothing, to simply let him process it for himself. But she also needed to hear him talk.? What might you like to see? Since early childhood, May himself had not thought about what it might be like to see, a fact that struck many who met him as inconceivable. The concept of vision simply was not part of his existence. Just the sound of Jennifer's question felt otherworldly to him. Fine made it very clear that I would never see in my lifetime, so it's probably not possible. They can't really be adequately described to me. Those are two things you really have to touch with your eyes in order to fully appreciate. Straight to the topless beaches. He told Jennifer he might like to see the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty or the Gal. Definitely the Golden Gate Bridge. Excerpted from. Crashing Throughby Robert Kurson Copyright . Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
January 2017
Categories |