Editing Oliver Sacks (section)

==Personal life==
Sacks never married and lived alone for most of his life.<ref name="Burkeman"/> He declined to share personal details until late in his life. He addressed his [[homosexuality]] for the first time in his 2015 autobiography ''On the Move: A Life''.<ref name=Move>Sacks, O. ''On the Move: A Life''. Knopf (2015). {{ISBN|0385352549}}</ref> Celibate for about 35 years since his forties, in 2008 he began a friendship with writer and ''New York Times'' contributor [[Bill Hayes (writer)|Bill Hayes]]. Their friendship slowly evolved into a committed long-term partnership that lasted until Sacks's death; Hayes wrote about it in the 2017 memoir ''[[Insomniac City|Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me]]''.<ref>{{cite web|first=Laura|last=Miller|url=http://www.salon.com/2015/05/02/the_beautiful_mind_of_oliver_sacks_how_his_knack_for_storytelling_helped_unlock_the_mysteries_of_the_brain/|title=The beautiful mind of Oliver Sacks: How his knack for storytelling helped unlock the mysteries of the brain|work=Salon|date=2 May 2015|access-date=24 August 2015|archive-date=27 August 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150827235916/http://www.salon.com/2015/05/02/the_beautiful_mind_of_oliver_sacks_how_his_knack_for_storytelling_helped_unlock_the_mysteries_of_the_brain/|url-status=live}}</ref>

In [[Lawrence Weschler]]'s biography, ''And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?'', Sacks is described by a colleague as "deeply eccentric". A friend from his days as a medical resident mentions Sacks's need to violate taboos, like drinking blood mixed with milk, and how he frequently took drugs like [[Lysergic acid diethylamide|LSD]] and [[Amphetamine|speed]] in the early 1960s. Sacks himself shared personal information about how he got his first [[orgasm]] spontaneously while floating in a swimming pool, and later when he was giving a man a massage. He also admits having "erotic fantasies of all sorts" in a natural history museum he visited often in his youth, many of them about animals, like hippos in the mud.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/books/review/and-how-are-you-dr-sacks-lawrence-weschler.html|title=A Biography of Oliver Sacks, Written by His Boswell|first=Daniel|last=Bergner|newspaper=The New York Times|date=20 August 2019|access-date=11 July 2020|archive-date=11 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200711022450/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/books/review/and-how-are-you-dr-sacks-lawrence-weschler.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
[[File:Pickerandsacks.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Sacks with [[Tobias Picker]], May 2015]]
Sacks noted in a 2001 interview that severe shyness, which he described as "a disease", had been a lifelong impediment to his personal interactions.<ref name="Wired"/> He believed his shyness stemmed from his [[prosopagnosia]], popularly known as "face blindness",<ref name="Prosopagnosia: Sacks' ">{{cite web|url=http://www.cbsnews.com/news/prosopagnosia-oliver-sacks-battle-with-face-blindness/|title=Prosopagnosia: Oliver Sacks' Battle with "Face Blindness"|last=Katz |first=Neil|work=CBS News|date=26 August 2010|access-date=3 February 2010|archive-date=25 December 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131225055234/http://www.cbsnews.com/news/prosopagnosia-oliver-sacks-battle-with-face-blindness/|url-status=live}}</ref> a condition that he studied in some of his patients, including the titular man from his work ''[[The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat]]''. This neurological disability of his, whose severity and whose impact on his life Sacks did not fully grasp until he reached middle age, even sometimes prevented him from recognising his own reflection in mirrors.<ref>{{cite web|last=Sacks |first=Oliver|title=Face-Blind Why are some of us terrible at recognizing faces?|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/face-blind|magazine=[[The New Yorker]]|date=30 August 2010|access-date=19 May 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160410092452/http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/08/30/face-blind|archive-date=10 April 2016 |quote=My problem with recognizing faces extends not only to my nearest and dearest but also to myself. Thus, on several occasions I have apologized for almost bumping into a large bearded man, only to realize that the large bearded man was myself in a mirror.}}</ref>

Sacks swam almost daily for most of his life, beginning when his swimming-champion father started him [[infant swimming#Swimming lessons for infants|swimming as an infant]]. He especially became publicly well-known for [[open water swimming]] when he lived in the [[City Island, Bronx|City Island]] section of the [[The Bronx|Bronx]], as he routinely swam around the island, or swam vast distances away from the island and back.<ref name=OLSacks.NYTobit/>

He was also an avid powerlifter.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.muscleandfitness.com/features/dr-oliver-sacks-mind-over-muscle/|title=Dr. Oliver Sacks: Mind Over Muscle|date=27 October 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://lithub.com/on-oliver-sacks-obsession-with-weightlifting/|title=On Oliver Sacks' Obsession With Weightlifting|date=18 April 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.oliversacks.com/oliver-sacks-books/on-the-move/|title=On The Move: A Life|website=Oliver Sacks &#124; Official Website of Author, Neurologist & Foundation}}</ref>

Sacks was a cousin of the Nobel Memorial Economics laureate [[Robert Aumann]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/he-saw-beyond-the-illnesses-into-the-souls-of-his-patients-413757|title='He saw beyond the illnesses into the souls of his patients'|website=The Jerusalem Post &#124; JPost.com|date=31 August 2015 |access-date=10 May 2022|archive-date=10 May 2022|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220510210105/https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/he-saw-beyond-the-illnesses-into-the-souls-of-his-patients-413757|url-status=live}}</ref>

===Illness===
Sacks underwent [[radiation therapy]] in 2006 for a [[uveal melanoma]] in his right eye. He discussed his [[stereoblindness|loss of stereoscopic vision]] caused by the treatment, which eventually resulted in right-eye blindness, in an article<ref>{{cite journal|last=Murphy |first=John|date=9 December 2010|title=Eye to Eye with Dr. Oliver Sacks|journal=Review of Optometry|url=http://www.revoptom.com/content/c/24666|access-date=28 June 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130419060147/http://www.revoptom.com/content/c/24666|archive-date=19 April 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> and later in his book ''[[The Mind's Eye (Sacks book)|The Mind's Eye]]''.<ref>Sacks, O. ''The Mind's Eye''. Knopf (2010). {{ISBN|0307272087}}.</ref>

In January 2015, [[metastasis|metastases]] from the ocular tumour were discovered in his liver.<ref name="Sacks">{{cite news|last=Sacks|first=Oliver|title=My Own Life: Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html|work=The New York Times|date=19 February 2015|access-date=19 February 2015|archive-date=19 February 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150219200339/http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/oliver-sacks-on-learning-he-has-terminal-cancer.html|url-status=live}}</ref> Sacks announced this development in a February 2015 ''New York Times'' op-ed piece and estimated his remaining time in "months". He expressed his intent to "live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can". He added: "I want and hope in the time that remains to deepen my friendships, to say farewell to those I love, to write more, to travel if I have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and insight."<ref name="Sacks"/>