NEW YORK REGION / THE CITY | February 01, 2009
Reading New York: The Bagel, the Lobster and the World's 'Luckiest Man'
By SAM ROBERTS
Robert E. Paulson’s “Not in Kansas Anymore: A Memoir of the Farm, New York City and Life with A.L.S.” (Gemma B. Publishing, $19.95) is an inspirational must-read record of one man’s indomitability with the support of his wife, his family and his friends.
Mr. Paulson, a former patent attorney, began suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, when he was an adult and the father of three sons (one still a teenager). He recalls his first view of New York in “the bad old days” of the early 1960s and his later move to Yorkville, where Lou Gehrig, the ballplayer who gave his name to the disease, grew up.
Along the way, Mr. Paulson offers some intriguing arcana regarding patent law, but the most moving passages involve his discovery, beginning in 1993, that “something was wrong with my body.” He chronicles his metamorphosis from a vigorous former farm boy an amateur singer into an invalid unable to speak, one who breathes through a mechanical ventilator and is dependent on a feeding tube. “I was essentially entombed in my own body,” he writes.
But he lived and wrote this memoir on an eye-responsive computer keyboard. The “diagnosis of this disease need not be a death sentence,” he concludes, adding: “Life is everything. And what is it but the ability to feel, think and communicate? Thanks to today’s technologies, A.L.S. can’t take any of these from you.”
Echoing Gehrig, Mr. Paulson, who is 71, writes: “I am a lucky man.”
Mr. Paulson, a former patent attorney, began suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, when he was an adult and the father of three sons (one still a teenager). He recalls his first view of New York in “the bad old days” of the early 1960s and his later move to Yorkville, where Lou Gehrig, the ballplayer who gave his name to the disease, grew up.
Along the way, Mr. Paulson offers some intriguing arcana regarding patent law, but the most moving passages involve his discovery, beginning in 1993, that “something was wrong with my body.” He chronicles his metamorphosis from a vigorous former farm boy an amateur singer into an invalid unable to speak, one who breathes through a mechanical ventilator and is dependent on a feeding tube. “I was essentially entombed in my own body,” he writes.
But he lived and wrote this memoir on an eye-responsive computer keyboard. The “diagnosis of this disease need not be a death sentence,” he concludes, adding: “Life is everything. And what is it but the ability to feel, think and communicate? Thanks to today’s technologies, A.L.S. can’t take any of these from you.”
Echoing Gehrig, Mr. Paulson, who is 71, writes: “I am a lucky man.”
Bob,beautifully written,interesting and often humorous vignettes about Kansas farm life,school days,family/community interaction and values.You are a man for all seasons..including that of the blasting hot Kansas summer which somehow brought forth ,with some judicious weeding and watering, a nuclear engineer and a patent attorney with his field of dreams sprouting atop an East Side Manhattan co-op. Doesn't quite compute but it's all for real.
ReplyDeleteI must agree, you Paulson's are an amazing bunch and I am proud to have you as family. This was a beautiful book.
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