Read more
Informationen zum Autor Montel Williams has established himself as a top player in the competitive daytime talk show arena since his debut in 1991. He is also a decorated former Naval intelligence officer and a renowned motivational speaker, author, actor, and philanthropist. He is the creator of The Montel Williams MS Foundation. Lawrence Grobel has written for many publications and has interviewed everyone from Truman Capote, Marlon Brando and Barbra Streisand to Halle Berry and Drew Barrymore. The author of The Art of the Interview , Grobel teaches at UCLA. Klappentext In 1999, after almost twenty years of symptoms, Montel Williams, a decorated naval officer and Emmy Award-winning talk show host, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He was struck with denial, fear, depression, and anger, and now he's battling back. Graced with strong values, courage, and hard-won wisdom, he shares his insights in this powerful book on the divergent roads a life can take, and recounts how he rose to meet the challenges he's faced. Surprising, searing, and deeply personal, Climbing Higher is as honest and inspiring as its author. Chapter One "You Have MS." I'm in the intensive care unit of Beth Israel North waiting to go into surgery, where I have a 50 percent chance of dying. The blood vessel leading to my sinuses is ten times the size it should be and blood has been pouring out of my nose for nearly a month. There are tubes going in and out of me, connected to a heart monitor. The cauterization inside my nose suddenly bursts and blood starts shooting like a jet stream across the bed. I look at the heart monitor and see the numbers go from 65 to 58, to 50, 40, 29. My blood pressure is 80/10. The monitor starts making noises and just before it flatlines I shout for the doctor. I don't want to die, but the machine shows 0 as I pass out. I'm dead. But somehow I'm aware of what's going on around me and I'm freaked out. There are four doctors trying to revive me. And one stranger, a strange sort of apparition cloaked in a shroud. Is it an angel? Am I going to be escorted to the white light? The figure approaches me and softly says, "Montel, Montel, you need to calm the fuck down." The doctors aren't aware of this stranger. I don't know who he is-I'm not even sure it's a he-but he's not like any angel I ever imagined. Whoever it is, it makes me laugh. "What are you talking about?" I say. I'm laughing because here is my big deathbed scene and I get an angel with a filthy mouth. I'm dying and he's telling me to stay calm? "You heard me," he says again. "If I don't tell it to you this way you are not going to listen. So calm the fuck down. It's not your time. You've still got too many things to accomplish." One of the doctors, Dr. Swarup, grabs my chest with his fingers and twists my skin hard enough to leave a bruise. "Montel!" he shouts. "Wake up! Wake up!" Another doctor starts yelling as well. "Who are you talking to? You've got to calm down!" "That's what he just said," I murmur and point to the apparition. When I finally calm down, I look up and it's gone. My four doctors bring me back. The next morning the anesthesiologist comes to prepare me for surgery. I say to her, "Make sure I wake up from this." I want to live. I'm not sure if what happened the day before is something that I imagined to ease my concern about dying or if it was truly a visitation, but I feel a sense of calm that I haven't felt for a very long time. It isn't going to last. Ten months later, in February of 1999, I flew to Salt Lake City, Utah, to appear in an episode of the TV show Touched by an Angel. On the plane, I got up to use the bathroom, and when I returned I stumbled and fell into the seat next to Grace, my wife. Our relationship was not at a high point and now what the hell was this? A searing pain had swept through my legs from ...
