Neurologist writes moving essay on learning he’s near death

Oliver Sacks, the British neurologist and best-selling author of numerous books, including “Awakenings,” said Thursday that he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. The 81-year-old disclosed his condition in an essay in the New York Times’ Opinion section. He said that he was initially diagnosed and treated nine years ago for a rare kind of melanoma of the eye, which left him blind in one eye, and that he recently learned he was among the “unlucky 2 percent” in whom that particular type of cancer had spread.

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.

Oliver Sacks in the New York Times

Sacks wrote the 1973 book “Awakenings,” which detailed his real-life experiences with patients who suffered from a condition known as encephalitis lethargica but were able to exit — however briefly — from their catatonic state with the aid of a drug. The story was adapted into a 1990 Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

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