Summary:

This essay is told from the perspective of an ophthalmologist who was consulted about a patient who had blurry vision. She is told by his internist that he has cancer but the family does not want him to know it. She plays along with the deception and does not inform the patient that his vision problems are from brain metastases. By serendipity she later learns that the patient knows his diagnosis but is playing along with the deception so as not to hurt his family. She is relieved to finally talk with him openly about his disease and his prognosis.

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Summary:

This award-winning essay is the germ for Grealy's later book, Autobiography of a Face (see this database). In this piece, Grealy describes the influence of her experiences of cancer, its treatments, and the resulting deformity of her face on her development as a person.

She explores how physical appearance influences one's sexual identity and over all self worth. She also explores how one's own interpretation of one's appearance can be self fulfilling. Only after a year of not looking at herself in the mirror, ironically at a time when she appears more "normal" than ever before, does Grealy learn to embrace her inner self and to see herself as more than ugly.

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In this short excerpt [from the early section of the book, describing his birth, family, and early childhood], Brown eloquently describes his difficult birth, the hopelessness of his doctors, and the persistent love of his family, especially of his mother. He relates in detail that profound moment when, at age five, he inexplicably grabbed a piece of chalk from his sister’s hand with his left foot and, with great difficulty and incredulity, traced the letter A on a piece of slate. For the first time, his family knew for sure that his intellect was intact. And for the first time, he could start to communicate with them.

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Summary:

This is a story about Bea, a single woman professor who has just had a caeserian section for an 11 pound boy, and her hospital roommate, Corinne. Bea describes her own discomfort with Corinne’s race, while admiring Corinne’s pride and nurturance toward her newborn son. As the story progresses, Corinne is betrayed by the medical world in a multitude of ways: misdiagnosis, racist treatment, denial of medical treatment, and incompetent care, resulting in Corinne’s sepsis and her son’s eventual death.

At the end of the story, after Corinne and Bea are discharged from the hospital, Bea tries to visit Corinne and deliver the pictures of her child that Corinne hadn’t been able to afford. But at the last minute, Bea turns away. Although she wants to help, she feels wholly inadequate, and believes she will only cause Corinne pain. Ironically, Bea remembers her last night in the hospital, how she covered her ears as Corinne’s baby whimpered, and as her own breasts surged with milk for the crying child. Even though her instincts and body tell her what to do for Corinne, she is not able to listen.

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