I'M HAVING a conversation with Tom Corrigan's eyes.
Four years ago, when he was a vigorous, athletic 46, Corrigan was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease.
Today, his pin-neat Narberth five-bedroom Colonial is outfitted to make life possible for Tom, who spends every waking moment in a motorized wheelchair, hooked up to a ventilator that does the breathing his lifeless muscles can't.
Attached to the front of his wheelchair is a computer screen with an amazing software program that allows Tom to "speak."
His words are written, not spoken, because ALS has rendered Tom mute. Hearing and sight remain, along with his engineer's brain, left pristine by the disease that wrecked everything else.
To spell out his thoughts, Tom looks at a keyboard on the screen. When he focuses for more than an instant on a letter, it appears at the top of the screen. The liberating $17,000 Tobii Technology computer - it also allows him to surf the Net and send e-mail - was a gift from members of the Bryn Mawr Running Club, which he helped found in 1996.
As his eyes pick out the letters, the only sound in the room is the soft, rhythmic hissing of his ventilator.
Born in Miami, Tom was educated in Upper Merion and earned a degree in mechanical engineering from Villanova in 1981. His younger brother, Jim, 48, tells me that Tom ran track and cross-country in high school, that he was in 13 marathons and that they took trips to Ireland and California where they'd bike 100 miles a day. Jim's an engineer, too, as is Tom's wife, Catherine, who has a Ph.D. in biomechanical engineering. That genetic pool makes you wonder what kind of brainiacs their kids - Matthew, 5, and Grace, 4 - will be.
It's likely Tom will never know.
His prognosis, Tom's eyes tell me, is "Glum."
Typically, ALS patients live from two to five years. Tom's current goal is to attend Jim's October wedding, says Miriam Seliktar, the health-care professional who coordinates Tom's constant care.
Miriam praises Tom's courage in taking a ventilator, which is life-saving but spirit-crushing. It sustains life, but what of the quality of life?
In the Philadelphia area, "the vast majority do not choose mechanical ventilation," I'm told by James Pinciotti, executive director of the ALS Association, Greater Philadelphia chapter.
They'd rather die than be entombed in a frozen body.
Tom chose life - and what some would see as torture - to get added time with Matthew and Grace, and in the slim hope of a medical or pharmaceutical breakthrough.
His religious faith sustains him, but the feeling of being a burden to his family haunts him.
"Tom has said, 'You have to live your life, not just mine,' " says Jim.