Secret Sickness

My father’s first words to me when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis were, “Don’t tell anyone..  This can be used against you.”    My old man was a physician who was diagnosed with MS at age 20, when he was in medical school.  He became a pediatric anesthesiologist and practiced medicine for nearly fifty years.  

The old man had to endure backward beliefs about his abilities as a practitioner.  Physician, heal thyself was one operative message in Aesop’s Fables, a warning that physical flaws in those who profess to help humanity were unacceptable.

            I believed the mission of journalists also was to serve the people.  I was in the news business when the bad news came from my neurologist.  I was finishing a stint at PBS and about to cover the Watergate Hearings for ABC News.   I did not buy my dad’s strong advice to keep my mouth shut about my illness.  I didn’t think it would be used against me.  I wanted to believe people were better than that, but I did what I was told. I was 25.  What did I know?

            At PBS I had helped produce a documentary about disability in America.   A number of our patients were contemporaries in wheelchairs.  I was deeply moved by them and convinced myself that the MS was merely a psychological reaction to young people in wheelchairs.   I chose not to talk to anyone about this.

            A secret sickness is heavy baggage to carry for a young   person.  It makes for a lonely life.   But the worst was yet to come.    Three months after the diagnosis I awakened to a sunny day and looked out the bedroom window at the U.S. Capitol dome.  A yawn and a few blinks and I was thunderstruck. I was blind in my right eye.   I saw nothing.

            It was classic MS.  My denial was shattered.

            I was admitted to Georgetown Hospital and told no one.   I was put on a course of powerful steroids.   Soon I   realized I had to say something to my masters in the newsroom.  I was MIA.    I told them I was having “vision problems.”  No one asked for details.    A few friends visited me in the hospital.  I simply went silent and they weren’t asking.  My father’s warning echoed in my head.  I was feeling very self-conscious.

            My old man had been right.  When I went to graduate school, a top executive at NBC News   assured me a job would be waiting when I finished. I was advised to tell him the truth. I did just that, and I watched the light in his eyes go out.  When I was up for a job on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, a few months later, I took a different tact.  I lied, told half -truths about my health, even cheated of the eye exam.  I was not proud, but I decided had to do  what it took  to get the job.   

            Dishonesty now was decades old.  It began when I was a senior in college and drew #4 in the first draft lottery.  A phony diagnosis kept me out of uniform.  I believed the Vietnam War was immoral.  Meniere’s Disease was the neurological disorder that kept me out of the army. It was a phony diagnosis.  I celebrated it because I did not want to die.  I was simultaneously aware that so me poor bastard went in my place.  I have no way to know who it was. 

            I felt guilty.  I did not get on a bus for New Haven and throw myself on the mercy of the draft board.  I did assume I had committed a crime.  The two doctors that came up with Menniere’s were fiends of my parents.  The truth was unspoken, and I did not see those doctors again.

 I had been an active participant in the antiwar movement and for the first time  had learned to take a stand.  I cut my hair and campaigned for Sen. Eugene McCarthy for the presidential nomination. In many ways, I had grown up.

            Two years later I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.  I lived in Washington, D.C. and had clear symptoms of the disease.  I was a young producer at ABC News and on the Up escalator.  Where did that leave me, past and present.

            Fighting   the battles of the past seems to be a waste of time.   Sixty years have passed.   I am a survivor.  To me, the ends justified the means.   My early life had been riddled with dishonesties.  I could not or would not have been allowed to take advantage of a life of limitless possibility.  I want to believe I live an honorable life.

            My wife and I have raised three wonderful children.  We hardly are saints, but we have helped others many times.  My work has been something of value.  None of that would have happened if I had not taken the steps I took as a young man.   I am at peace. I am at peace.