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: #652111 in Books
• Published on: 2005-02-01
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Amazon.com Review
In this moving and engrossing memoir, veteran television news producer Richard Cohen relates a life spent dealing with multiple sclerosis, first diagnosed when he was 25 years old and just getting started in the competitive world of broadcast journalism. As his career progressed, he struggled not only with the disease but the touchy question of how much of the truth about himself to share with colleagues and potential employers. Cohen spent much of his life running from the onset of the disease's symptoms from which his father and grandmother also suffered. Defiantly, he took challenging, sometimes extremely dangerous assignments in Lebanon, Poland, and on the domestic political campaign trail, even as his body deteriorated. But over the course of Blindsided, it becomes apparent that illness had actually built Cohen up even as it ripped him apart. Without the physical and mental toughness required to navigate a journalist's life while fighting back loss of eyesight and poor equilibrium, it's doubtful that the flaky kid we meet early in the book would transform into the award-winning professional Cohen eventually becomes. His marriage to journalist Meredith Vieira, every bit his equal as both newshound and deadpan cynical comic, gave Cohen the stable family life and children he needed when MS made it impossible to continue in a traditional news job. But two bouts with colon cancer in the late 1990s tested his resolve and his family's patience. While Cohen is both courageous and inspirational, Blindsided is not the overly sentimental clichéd tale that stories about fighting illness often become. He refuses to paint himself as the hero (except when making fun of his own failure to be heroic) and recounts in detail the strain that he put on his marriage and children. Stories such as this often end with the memoirist arriving at a state of peace and mental clarity but again Cohen remains more compelling and credible by offering no such pat answers. As with most people fighting to preserve their families, their lives, and their bodies, Richard Cohen's is an ongoing struggle. --John Moe

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

Customer Reviews

Outstanding...
What a poignoint narrative...I see so many parallels between his experience with that of our family...so few people truly understand what living and coping with life threatening chronic illnesses is like or how a progressive illness can have such a major impact on a family. He is a role model of 'strength' and 'tenacity' for those of us who traverse the 'landmine' of castrosophic illnesses. I appreciate his searing honesty and his outlook on life. I could relate to everything he wrote about. Bravo to a well written, moving book.

Honest� Inspiring� Realistic� Sobering
Review based on hardcover 9/2003... Reviewer's comment: 'Until you walk in my shoes...' I offer that reminder to those reviewers and readers who may pass judgment on a writer, who openly shares his life of trials and tribulations, of what he does or does not say... how he does or does not react to his chronic illness. Here is a man who opens himself to public scrutiny of emotions from the heart -- that alone is a over-the-top fete to accomplish, in this reviewer's eye. Shalom, Mr. Cohen, thank you.

BLINDSIDED is a book sized small in width and length, but powerfully-packed in content with exceptional use of words, phrases and sharing of personal privacy. Richard M. Cohen tells of his life, his family, his chronic illness with candor, wit, anger and courage. Cohen reveals heartache, emotional, physical and mental trials, with introspection of his actions and effect upon his family and self well-being. There are moments when Cohen sometimes goes within himself, leaving the reader, but faithfully he returns.

At age 25, Cohen was diagnosed with beginning stages of Multiple Sclerosis (MS) - a progressive disease. In later years, he battles recurring colon cancer with accompanying side effects, and deals with blindness attributed to side effects of MS. With honesty, the author vents the struggles of physical and mental pain. The fact that the medical profession was only mildly supportive in caring... unconcerned with applying the holistic approach, and the ramifications suffered by Mr. Cohen is appalling, a blemish on the medical profession -- albeit not a new occurrence.

At the beginning there are natural denials ... Cohen states, "Yes, denial can put the brain to sleep, anesthetizing the mind that refuses to face the truth and see the approaching freight train hauling the heavy load of heavy reality." Some of his "advisors" tell him... 'don't tell anyone'... then others say, 'tell about your illness'... 'full disclosure does not work in the real world...' Either route presented problems... within these advisors are coworkers, peers, relating to the damage or not of telling employers and prospective employers. Attempting to live life to the fullest with courage and dignity, Cohen continues his participation in assignments of travel including Poland, Beirut, San Salvador, Middle East and China.

Beyond medical distant (non) attention are the CBS networks executives who mistreated Richard Cohen as well as Meredith Vieira in her right to put family first ... that includes Mike Wallace, his use of ugly language to a female coworker related to baby Ben being brought to his mother's office and a natural act of a baby crying. Hooray for you, Ms. Vieira for not bowing to the ignorant authorities you had to put up with. My admiration of you grew through the years for not bowing to corporate dirty politics. And, your presence on ABC's THE VIEW is exceptional.

From Richard Cohen... "... the formula for successful coping rests in the eye of the beholder... no magic... Making peace is not a one-shot deal but an effort that spans a lifetime. Coping takes discipline and self-control."

Recommended reading: THE LAST DANCE BUT NOT THE LAST SONG, MY STORY author Renee Bondi

A terrific book, as far as it goes
I, too, suffer from a rare, chronic, progressive neurological disease. I saw myself so clearly in these pages - the frustration, the anger, the acknowledgement of the energy it takes just to make it from day to day.

This is not a "how-to-cope" book. It will take you inside the mind of a person who suffers from a disease -- severe MS in this case -- and is a journal of sorts of his battle for 25+ years. Insult is added to injury when he develops colon cancer - twice.

Cohen is marrried to television talk-show host (The View) Meredith Viera, and it's about the dynamics of their marriage and family (three children) as much as it is about him and his illnesses. The honesty is searing and made me feel as if I were with a compatriot in a lonely war.

What I have found to be of great help for myslef is developing my spiritual (different from religious) life. Cohen dismisses this avenue of help, although he talks a lot about atttitude, and I wanted to reach out to him and share the comfort I have found.

I still highly recommend this book to anyone who is chronically ill, or shares a life with someone who faces that challenge.