It was just last week that I wrote how important it is for people to give themselves time out. Time to regain the sense of themselves and their purpose. To refill their physical, spiritual and emotional tanks to deal with what G-d gives us to manage.
I was on a high coming back from the Jewish Learning Institute Retreat, having refilled my tank and presented to others.
Then last Thursday morning my son woke me with chest pains. I was an Emergency Medical Technician for ten years, and all symptoms pointed to gas. Had I had gas-x in the house, I might have given it to him and told him to wait for a half hour. But then his breathing became difficult, and I ran him to the hospital.
As you know, the hospital was trying to sell me some emergency medical procedures, an angiogram and gallbladder surgery. I asked the doctors whom I trusted what they thought, they gave me the strength to defy the doctors’ hard sell, and get him to a better hospital. As an aside on this, a gastroenterologist told me that my son had gallstones. When I asked if they could be treated first with medication she said that the stones would always threaten to act up and give him pain, that he needed surgery. At Cohen’s Children’s hospital, the doctor showed me the ultrasound report which clearly showed that there were no gallstones at all. That was all part of the hard sell.
The moral of any medical story is to get a second opinion, and use your instinct if it doesn’t sound right. At Cohen’s, the staff decided that it was too coincidental that this heart and gallbladder were infected at the same time. They determined that my son must have had a minor virus that created anti-bodies that were not only fighting the virus, but started fighting his healthy organs: heart, gallbladder, liver and spleen. They quarantined him and started him on powerful medications. No gallbladder surgery required. No angiogram required as the prior hospital stated.
By Sunday evening, all the test revealed he was on the road to recovery. His high fever had subsided, and although his organs are all still inflamed, he was well enough to recover at home. So I took him home last night, where he will continue his powerful medication and recover for the next three weeks.
It was your tefilot and the love that came via emails. You invoked Rachamei shamayim to get me the right messengers from HKBH who figured out the right course of medicine. The week before, I was giving classes, it is much easier to give than to ask for help. But it is important that you know how much I appreciate our relationship, you my friend the reader and me. It was 11 years ago this month that I started the community website, THEFIVETOWNS.COM, so I could provide you with information and support, and I so very much appreciate the love and support and tefilot that come in for my son as his own body was attacking his organs. I ask that until Rosh Hashanah, your tefilot continue for my Yosef Yeshayah ben Sara Leah to ensure that he has a complete recovery to his still-enlarged organs.
Thank G-d I was asked to present at the retreat, it gave me the physical and spiritual chizuk I needed to get through this very difficult time with emunah/faith that with all of our tefilot, it would turn out for the best.
In the zchus of all of our tefilot, may HKBH open up His Rachamei Shamayim and bring the geulah bkorov/redemption speedily.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
-Suri