Scott's Memoir

Scott Goldstein's Memoir

by David A. Goldstein

This is Scott's story. It is a narrative by a father about a very courageous boy's long battle with malignancy which resulted in many hospitalizations, numerous operations, partial paralysis, intermittent blindness, a two month coma and finally ended in his death in 1988, at the age of fifteen. It is a tale of many happy moments despite an initial diagnosis in 1977 of incurable central nervous system tumor disease when he was only four+ years of age, and a prognosis then that he had only six months to live. It is simply a running account of what happened to Scott and his parents during an extended contest between life and death of an only child. I write it in the spirit of "Death Be not Proud" by John Gunther because 41 years later, following the death of young Johnny Gunther in 1947, many "children are [still] afflicted by disease";* total cures are still elusive and maybe they and their families may gain some smidgen of strength and sustenance from the courage, humor and caring for others Scott displayed during his lengthy affliction. His unique spirit and ability to milk some joy and fun out of almost every precious day of his life fueled our hopes and helped us to live and enjoy many moments of his remaining years instead of waiting with sadness and despair for his death.

Scott was born in Manhattan on July 21, 1972 where he spent his entire life until his death on April 16, 1988, after an illness which lasted eleven years. He lived with us in an upper East Side apartment and was a student, at the Dalton School, which he loved dearly, from nursery until the first year of high school. Despite the "Sword of Damocles" hanging over his head from the relatively early pronouncement of a death sentence in 1977, Scott managed to attend school full time for more than nine years, until November, 1986, when the ravages of his deadly disease finally caught up with and incapacitated him. Twelve hospitalizations later and after 241 days in the hospital, he passed away in April, 1988.

At school, Scott's interest in sports led to his becoming the manager of the Dalton middle school baseball team. At the Dalton summer camp, during the summer of 1985, he was a counselor in training. In late 1985, he even had a part as a child actor in several scenes in the Woody Allen movie "Radio Days". During this time, despite having had spinal surgery [diagnostic laminectomy] and radiotherapy treatment to his brain and spine in 1977 and a brain shunt operation in January, 1986, he traveled with us to twenty-one countries around the world.

I will attempt to describe him for you. He was certainly not the tallest boy in his class although he had long legs. His face was a mirror of his feelings and emotions at the moment. His hair which was sort of dirty blond in his early years turned brown after it grew back following the radiotherapy. He had a beautiful fair complexion and an infectious smile which could melt the foulest mood like butter. Surely my prejudiced view as his father that he was a good looking boy was shared by others but most people did not dwell on his appearance but rather upon his personal qualities of courage, his love, his giving, his kindness, his caring, his humor, his wisdom, his curiosity, and his uncanny ability to perceive and sense other people's stress and discomfort and to help them to cope with it. He was the most loving person I've ever met. He would often sneak up quietly behind me when I was writing a brief or law memorandum while working on my computer and put his arms around my neck and kiss me right on the lips. As a young child, he was always running. He could spend hours amusing himself with toys and games. He loved to draw maps and cartoons and he was an avid reader. He spent many hours with his mother Rena learning the French language, reading French stories, singing and story telling. His single most memorable trait was his sense of humor. He was very comfortable among adults and often regaled our friends with jokes. When he learned how to do word processing on the computer, he spent hours at it, composing short stories, many of which were quite humorous. Although not the most physically coordinated kid around, he enjoyed spectator sports, especially professional baseball and wrestling. He attended a number of Mets baseball games in New York including the 1986 playoffs and World Series and he also went to several wrestling matches with me both in New York and in Florida and had acquired many wrestling figures and a ring and he staged wrestling matches and videotaped them, playing the role of ring announcer.

* quoted from the forward to "Death Be Not Proud" by John Gunther