Chasing Hope: A Patient's Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future - Hardcover

Cohen, Richard M.

 
9780399575259: Chasing Hope: A Patient's Deep Dive into Stem Cells, Faith, and the Future
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0399575251 ISBN 13: 9780399575259
Verlag: Blue Rider Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

After more than four decades living with multiple sclerosis, New York Times bestselling author Richard M. Cohen finds a flicker of hope in a groundbreaking medical procedure.

Richard Cohen struggles with failing limbs and is legally blind. He has survived two bouts of colon cancer and a life-threatening blood clot in his lungs. After enduring decades of harsh treatments and invasive therapies, Cohen decided to trade in his life as a patient.

In 2012, Cohen and his wife, Meredith Vieira, were invited to host and chair an adult stem cell conference at the Vatican. Scientists would be gathering in Rome to discuss stem cell therapy for autoimmune diseases, including MS. A believer in the power of denial and determination over faith and hope, Cohen was caught off guard by what he learned. Medical technology had advanced further and more quickly than Cohen had known. Could there be a chance his health could improve? Could MS be cured? As Cohen took part in a pioneering stem cell protocol, he opened himself to the possibility of hope for the first time in his adult life.

Cohen's deep dive into the cutting-edge world of stem cell research and his journalistic investigation of hope includes interviews with doctors, scientists, and religious leaders, as well as conversations with others living with chronic conditions, all with the goal of understanding a hope that is both elusive and alluring.

As drily funny as it is emotionally vulnerable, Chasing Hope navigates the fascinating and ever-changing intersection between illness and hope.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Richard M. Cohen is the author of two New York Times bestsellers: a memoir, Blindsided, detailing his struggles with MS and cancer and his controversial career in the news business; and Strong at the Broken Places, following the lives of five individuals living with serious chronic illnesses. His distinguished career in network news earned him numerous awards, including three Emmys and a Peabody. Cohen lives outside New York City with his wife, Meredith Vieira. They have three grown children.

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Chapter 1

Losing Sight of the Future

On a dark, blustery afternoon in the autumn of 2010, I joined a ragtag army of New York City commuters waiting to board a bus that would lumber downtown. Heavy rain pelted everyone in line. We were stepping over puddles and negotiating the steep, slippery stairs, trying not to break a leg or let ourselves be blown away.

As I slid into one of the last remaining seats, the bus started up again and began slowly making its way down Broadway, the Great White Way I knew so well. I would be disembarking before we hit the theater district, as I had done a thousand times. I glanced out the fogged window to see the stores and restaurants that had long served as my landmarks.

I was numb, less from the chill than from the fact that in recent days it had become clear that after years of relatively stable sight, I was losing yet more vision due to complications from multiple sclerosis. MS is my constant companion. It is an incurable inflammatory, degenerative, progressive, autoimmune chronic illness. Whatever. Not only is my vision fleeing, but my lateral judgment is also compromised, which accounts for the bruises on my arms and legs from bumping into furniture and glancing off doorways. Sometimes I felt I needed football pads just to walk the streets of New York.

The bus was headed to where I wanted to go, the MS was not, though both were going south. The disease was active, dancing through much of my body. The neurological predator was focusing once again on my eyes. If I lost any more sight, I feared I would lose my ability to function as a writer, not to mention as a husband and father.

Suddenly I sat up ramrod straight as I realized I had no idea where I was. I could not make out the storefronts outside the window. They were lost in a foggy blur, fading to vague shapes and drab colors. Buildings were melting into unrecognizable blobs. I felt as if I had been kidnapped and was being transported to an alien place. I froze. My reflexive denial, usually a well-oiled machine, stalled out. Frantically, I attempted to peer through the fog, trying to identify anything that would tell me my location. I just could not make that happen. I turned my attention to the driver. He was yelling at an elderly woman, telling her where to get off the bus. That was what I needed to hear. I listened and figured out our current location then counted the stops until I knew it was time to struggle down the stairs.

I emerged into a strange city that I could barely make out. Nothing looked right. Sights and sounds were exaggerated. Cars seemed to move at double speed. Please don't do this, I silently cried out. Don't let me lose my sight. I was pleading with nobody; I had long ago given up on the idea of a deity coming to the rescue. That narrowed my options.

This kind of panic was unknown to me. During my years as a producer at CBS News, I had worked alongside type A personalities who drank coffee so strong you could eat it with a fork, people who constantly hyperventilated their way around the office. I was not one of them. I was labeled a type Z personality. It's only television, I used to say. Not worth making yourself crazy.

Anxiety gripped me so hard that now I was the one hyperventilating. As I stood struggling to see the other side of a busy avenue, I was in full emotional retreat. I wanted to cry. Usually, I am a guy with a penchant for gallows humor. Now I could not find my reservoir of old, bad jokes.

I had been legally blind for some time. This was something different. I knew a crisis when I saw one. There I was, standing in a cold rain on a busy street corner and wondering where to turn for help.

I managed to get my bearings. My friend Charlie Osgood's apartment was right across the street. Praise be. Charlie is as calming in person as he is on television, and he helped me get emotionally righted. My anxiety level was reduced, but not by much. There was work to do. The first step was to see if I could reel in my missing vision.

The next day, I was in safe territory. I made my way to the infusion suite at the Tisch MS Research Center. The office was dry and warm and strangely welcoming. I had performed this medical ritual many times when alarm bells sounded. But the voices around me were comforting because I knew the people they belonged to, not because they were in possession of a magic bullet.

Out came the Solu-Medrol, the old steroid warrior, an all-purpose drug used to treat conditions as varied as arthritis, disorders of the blood and the immune system, severe allergic responses, certain cancers, eye conditions, and skin, kidney, intestinal, and lung diseases. One size fits all.

I have been getting infusions of this stuff for years, mostly for lack of a more effective elixir. It fights inflammation, a contributing problem with MS, but it offers no promise of long-term change, only short-term relief. Often not even that. I would have preferred a martini.

As the steroid flowed into a vein in my arm, it left the usual metallic taste in my mouth. I sat and stared at nothing in particular, wondering if any part of my missing sight would reappear. Days after the infusion, the immediate crisis might end. It might not. You put your money down and take your chances. I would have to wait a few weeks to see if my condition stabilized or even improved. Based on my history, it was unlikely it would get much better. The drug has never carried me back to the starting line. But for no extra charge, the poison does bring on madness and violent mood swings to go with certain serious sleep deprivation. I knew I would be a mess, but when vision has been lost, you do what you have to and hope there will be a payoff.

Maybe my missing vision would crawl at least halfway home this time. I would settle for that. I am used to settling. In the MS world, patients make do with what we can get. By now I understand that I always am waiting for Godot. I am tired of being dragged to the theater when I am pretty sure I know how the play ends.

A few weeks after the infusion, a portion of my diminished vision did grudgingly return. With the small improvement came the need for a midcourse correction. There would be new lenses, adjusted expectations, an even greater tolerance for ambiguity required. Not knowing if the improvement will last has become a way of life for me.

In my well-worn speech to myself, I advised only that I keep my middle finger pointed north. That would keep the piss and vinegar circulating and serve as my compass. If that is self-indulgent, so be it. Anger can be its own command to keep fighting.

Once I learned I had MS, I watched my father closely for clues of what would happen to me. My Old Man died at ninety, having lived with MS for seventy years. The truth is that after my dad retired, he had many good years and seemed strong until he reached his eighties. It was only in the last decade of his life that he withdrew, effectively shutting himself off. Once a hearty traveler, he stopped doing much and had to be coaxed out of the house. In his final years, he was in a motorized wheelchair. The Old Man seemed to surrender to a reality he knew he could not alter.

I did not inherit his common sense or the willingness to recognize when it was time to raise the white flag. But my...

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Verlag
Blue Rider Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0399575251
ISBN 13 
9780399575259
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Terminal Video
n.pederzini@terminaldistribuzione.com

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