New York City Actor Alex Weisman Back At Work After Suffering Serious Eye Injury In Random Subway Attack
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A New York City actor is now back at work after he was seriously hurt in a random subway attack.
CBS2's Dave Carlin caught up with Alex Weisman near his home in Harlem almost five months after he was attacked by a stranger in the subway. His eye socket was fractured and retina torn.
"I had some really low moments," Weisman said.
It nearly cost him his sight, and the suspect who sucker-punched him for no apparent reason inside the 103rd Street station is on the loose.
"I wasn't going to let it get me down," Weisman said.
Doctors at Mount Sinai went over the options with him -- incisions with traditional surgical techniques or go with lasers.
"They needed to laser off the tear so that it wouldn't get worse," Weisman said.
"Alex was be able to come in every day make sure that the retinal detachment didn't extend past the laser. We were able to use a minimally invasive approach," said Dr. Gareth Lema, with New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
Weisman, an actor, made his Broadway debut in "Harry Potter and The Cursed Child."
Recently, he started working again in TV.
"Taping the audition was the moment of triumph for me," he said. "And I got it."
Appearing in an episode of a hospital drama on network television put him in a superhero costume and back in an ER -- this time a set instead of real thing.
He says his biggest heroes are in health care, including the staff at New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai.
"I was feeling really sorry for myself and then I was in the hospital every day with these front line workers who are giving everything that they had to help save all of us and ... I was literally looking in the face of someone who couldn't see their children to save our lives, complaining about my eye, and it just put everything into perspective," Weisman said.
He says to anyone hit with a hardship -- push through it and keep going.
