Dear Dr. _______:

Whenever I visit your office, I like to take a moment to look at the thank you letters adorning the wall next to your filing cabinets.  On my most recent visit, I made a mental note to put into words my gratitude for the way that you have taken care of me and my daughters over the past fifteen years.

I especially wish to thank you for initially detecting the ocular pressure condition that I have suffered with for the past three years and thank you again for detecting the recent increase in pressure during my December 2003, visit to your office.  My ophthalmologist has since changed the medication I take to bring the condition under control once again.

But to thank you only for detecting problems with my visual acuity would do neither of us justice.  To do so would overlook the time in March 1991 when my car burst into flames outside your Kings Highway office, and you ran outside to drag me out of my vehicle moments before my car exploded.  Had you not coordinated emergency services when two nearby vehicles also burst into flames – which created a raging fireball – it’s quite possible that I, and many other passersby, would not be here today.  For this I offer thanks.

If I were to stop at this point, I would still consider myself to be insufficiently thankful.  How would I be able to show my gratitude for your detection of my near-total loss of hearing in June 1996?  I remember how dazed I was as I left your office after you wrote, “You better see an audiologist – soon!”   And if you had not tackled me as I left Vision World on that fateful day, I most certainly would have walked into that NYC garbage truck backing up onto the sidewalk.  And who would have guessed that when my head hit the sidewalk pavement, my hearing would be miraculously restored?  You might say, with all due modesty, “Not me,” and despite the fact that we could disagree whether the proper response would have been, “Not I,” I feel that I owe my hearing, and life, to you.

I could go on and on reciting the many instances where you have intervened to save my life, but that would only challenge your modesty, like the time you rushed to Coney Island Hospital to donate blood when you heard that I had severed my right hand during a freak folding beach-chair accident.  I tried to thank you then, but you refused to shake my stump.  I remember your words to this day, “Glad to be of help.”

In conclusion, I know that it’s impossible to thank you enough for all of your help over the past fifteen years, but please accept this note as a first step.

Respectfully,

Mark Rosenblatt