Three years ago, shortly after I had a delicate operation on my right eye, I suddenly went blind in that eye — nothing but a sheet of white blocking my field of vision. It was after hours, and I couldn’t get hold of the surgeon, so in desperation I called my ophthalmologist, Dr. Josh Litwin, and asked him to talk me down.
He listened for a few minutes and then said, “I can’t continue this conversation right now because I’m late for a medical appointment of my own. But give me your contact information anyway.”
An hour later I heard a knock on my door, and there was Dr. Litwin! I ask you: Who makes house calls anymore?
He walked in, pulled some instruments out of his medical bag and gave me a thorough eye exam.
“Just as I thought,” he said. “The pressure in your eye is way, way up, sort of like glaucoma on steroids.”
As it turned out, steroids had a lot to do with it. There was some prednisone in the antibiotic eye drops I had been using, and in a few rare cases like mine it can cause your eyeball pressure to spike.
“Oh my God!” I said. “What can I do?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I brought some pills with me. Take one now, and another before you go to bed, and you’ll be fine in the morning. But see the surgeon anyway and let him confirm my diagnosis.”
Which the surgeon did. In hindsight, I probably could have waited until the next day, but I can’t tell you what a relief it was to have Dr. Litwin show up. And he knew it.
“I didn’t do it for this,” he said, pointing at my eye. “I did it for this,” he said, tapping my forehead. “You sounded really scared on the phone, and I didn’t want you to have to agonize overnight.”
That was typical Josh: always going the extra mile to help his patients. A lot of them have been checking in with their own stories of his compassion and generosity for the past two weeks, ever since the shocking news came that he died suddenly on Nov. 20. He was only 62.
“During one visit I overheard an elderly female patient tell Dr. Litwin about her husband’s eye condition,” wrote one patient. “Dr. Litwin went to the waiting room and quietly urged her husband to make an appointment to see him as well. What was extraordinary was that Dr. Litwin quietly told the elderly man not to let a lack of insurance deter him from making an appointment. He said it was urgent enough where he would do it without any fee. That speaks volumes about the man he was.”
It sure does. I know I speak for every one of his patients when I say he wasn’t just our doctor; he was our friend. And we miss him terribly already. My deepest sympathy goes to his family, especially his parents. His father is Dr. Richard Litwin, who was the most beloved ophthalmologist in Berkeley until he retired and Josh took over the practice. There are a lot of people with terrible eye problems who can still see thanks to the doctors Litwin, father and son.
Sorry to end 2020 on such a sad note, but in a way it’s the perfect ending to a perfectly awful year. May Josh’s memory be a blessing, and may 2021 be a better year for all of us. And if you’re a believer, please say a prayer for our poor, battered country — and the world.
Martin Snapp can be reached at catman442@comcast.net.