Category Archives: miscellaneous

Today I was hit by a car

aliyah, miscellaneous

After two years of crisis and trauma, I’m grateful we’re finally coming out of the intense pressures that have become our standard daily fare.  Yesterday morning I had a long talk with my dh and said we need to consciously recognize that life is getting smoother – finally! – and move out of an urgency paradigm; it has to be conscious since urgency has become habitual due to circumstances.  That’s what I was planning to write about today.

This afternoon I took ds4 with me to pick up something from a friend; I wanted to take ds6 but he had fallen asleep and couldn’t be woken up.  Ds7 was at a friend and Yirmiyahu had fallen asleep. So I uncharacteristically set out with just one child to this particular friend.  After getting the item, I headed towards my mom, planning to surprise her with a short visit.

In Israel, drivers are obligated to stop for pedestrians crossing the street.  I’ve been very impressed by how good Israeli drivers are about this and as a result (at least where we live) most people will cross in front of a moving vehicle even before it shows signs of slowing, trusting the driver will stop.  Being an experienced driver and knowing drivers can be distracted, I’m very cautious and always pause and make sure the driver has slowed and is looking at me before beginning to cross.  That’s what I did today.

The driver had come to a stop but I kept my eye on her as I crossed (another cautious habit of mine) and as I did, I was horrified to see her begin to drive straight toward me.  My mind for a fraction of a second couldn’t process that she was looking straight at me and had started driving, but more urgent than understanding why she was doing that, was the knowledge that ds4 was between me and the oncoming car.

My heart froze as I began to turn towards ds4…the car was so close and the time to act was so short….

I turned toward him to yank him away and before I could pull him, the car hit me.

As I fell I couldn’t see ds4 and I had a horrible panicked feeling that he was going to be run over.  When I frantically looked in his direction I saw him lying on the street.  In a split second I jumped up and began banging on the window of the car to get her to stop driving, screaming at the driver, “What did you do?”  She still didn’t realize what had happened – the sun was shining in her eyes and she was still driving after having hit us.  Ds4 was terrified and crying and crying; I scooped him up and sat hugging him on the curb, trying to calm him (and myself) down.

People came running to help from all directions.  I very composed and calm on the outside, but I knew I was in shock; I was frozen inside.  I even calmed down the driver and told her I know it was a mistake, mistakes happen, everything is okay.  They asked me if they should call an ambulance but after a few minutes, ds calmed down and I said I thought he was okay.   I did agree for them to call Hatzala, which I really appreciated so there would be someone except for me to deal with to deal with the situation.

They told me to go to the emergency center or the hospital, but I didn’t have any id or money on me and I knew that I wouldn’t be seen without that.  I also knew I was going to get a big bill that wouldn’t be paid by anyone but me unless I got a doctor’s approval and that wouldn’t happen unless I took legal action.  It was just too overwhelming to have to go by myself right then and so I told them I’d go the next day to get checked by a doctor.  I wanted to think that I wouldn’t need any medical help because I couldn’t think about dealing with being in the hospital again; the shock thing again.  All I wanted to do is curl up in bed and have a good long cry.

Finally the driver drove off and I walked slowly to my mother, thankful that we had escaped what could have been a catastrophe but worried about the pain I was already feeling throughout my body.  It was scaring me that the pains were moving fast from one area to another, not localized at all.  From my mom’s house, I called my husband and asked him to meet me so we could go to the emergency center together.  That was an unpleasant experience, because the impatient doctor on duty spent hardly two minutes with me and ds4 combined.  I told him what happened.  He told  me to move my head up and down, right and left, thumped me hard down my spine in four places, then checked ds4 and told me we were very lucky.

When he came back with the written report a few minutes later, I saw there were several significant errors – he wrote that I said I hadn’t been hit and hadn’t been knocked down and when I brought hit to his attention, he began yelling at me that he’s only writing down what I said.  He wrote nothing about the pains throughout my neck, back, hips, and all down the right side of my body where I fell (though he noted that I was walking on a marked crosswalk when this happened – funny the details he felt were important to write).  He yelled that I can go file a police report but he’s only writing down what I told him.

There are times you feel more like advocating for yourself and times you feel less like it.  This was a time I felt less like it.  I had been hit by a car two hours before, was feeling very emotionally shaky and traumatized, had pain throughout my body that was getting worse as time went on and I have to fight with the doctor because he made a careless error and his ego wouldn’t allow him to correct it?

After over an hour we finally we got the new report.  He changed it to say ‘she says she thinks she was hit by a car’ instead of ‘she says she wasn’t hit by a car’.  He left it that I didn’t get knocked over. He wouldn’t put into the original report all the pains I told him about but added in that after an hour I had told him about pain in my neck.  (I don’t know why my back, hips and right and arm got left out.)  I showed him my torn shirt but he didn’t seem to be interested.  I was told I’ll need the medical report for further legal proceedings and the last thing I need is it to be written that nothing happened.

It was a very unpleasant experience on top of a very hard experience.

Now I’m home.  My husband is taking off of work tomorrow to be here; I hope I’ll feel better when I wake up in the morning but the people we’ve spoken to have told us to expect it to be worse and he wants to be here to make things as easy as possible for me.  I put in a call to our osteopath and though you usually have to wait two months for an appointment, I’m hopeful she’ll find room for me sooner.

Right after this happened, I was walking to my mom’s and focusing on my feelings of gratitude when suddenly I felt almost angry at God.  Like, why do You have to give me messages like this?  Am I so difficult that You can’t get me to take notice and grow as a person unless you put these kinds of things in front of me?  I had this feeling very, very strongly after Yirmiyahu almost died when he was eight months old, which came on the heels of dd18 being in critical condition and close to death less than two weeks before, both of these things coming on top of other significant difficulties.  Intellectually I believe that everything that God does is for our good but it’s not always easy to see or feel that in the heat of difficulties.

I can’t yet see the good in this accident.  I don’t know why this happened.  And I don’t know why anything that looks negative to me has happened.  But I’ve been able to see glimmers of good that have emerged from our most traumatic experiences so it makes it easier to trust that this time, good is also going to come from this.

Avivah

Insulting my readers by being so judgmental?

homeschooling, miscellaneous

Below is a comment to a recent post about how glad I was to not be sending the kids to school this year.  Every once in a while I get a message like this – the last time was when I wrote about how sad it is that so many babies with T21 are given into foster care – and I’m going to respond to the underlying issue now.

>>I have to admit, I’m starting to feel a bit insulted by your constant bashing of school. I’m sure you don’t mean to come across that way, but lately you seem to have such utter contempt for school- every time you mention school it’s to say how glad you are to be out of that horrible institution and that school is worthless, that kids can only get a REAL education at home.

Well, I disagree. I loved school. My kids, for the most part, enjoy school. School isn’t perfect, but I think there are so many benefits to kids going to school. Homeschooling would be a disaster for our family. My kids and I love eachother, but we don’t want to be together 24/7. I don’t want to teach them math, science, etc. My kids learn things at school that I couldn’t begin to teach them, they have experiences that they could never have at home, and they enjoy the interaction with the other kids in class, on teams, on projects, etc. I think it’s also good for them to learn to get along with and work with people who aren’t related to them. It’s practice for the real life they’ll experience when they finish school. And I think it’s good for them not to have their family to lean on every minute of the day- going to school helps foster a bit of independence.

You look on in horror as people are “always rushing” to drop off and pick up kids to/from school. I don’t think we rush that much. And when we do…it’s not the end of the world. It would never occur to me to pull my kids out of school to avoid rushing. People rush to work, to the drycleaner, to the bank…. going places in a hurry is a part of life. A pain, sure, but let’s not blow things out of proportion.

You always struck me as a nice person, and I’m not trying to attack you. I’m glad homeschooling works so well for your family, and I totally understand while you would blog about that, but please try not to be so patronizing and disapproving of those of us who send our kids to school- and please realize that many of us are thrilled with school and aren’t secretly wishing we could chuck it all and homeschool. It sounds like you pity us all, but we don’t need or want that.<<

First of all, thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.  Time is a precious commodity and I appreciate you sharing some of your time with me.

Now about your comment.  You know, I’ve never, ever said in person or in print that everyone should homeschool.  Never, ever, ever.  I don’t believe that.

I try to look for the positives in whatever situation I’m in, and when my kids were in school I focused on the positives of that; some people implied that I was a sell-out to the homeschooling community as a result.  Though I certainly had plenty of material and examples, I chose not to mentally focus on and definitely not to express here how much I felt was lacking in their education.  And I still haven’t.  My approach has from day one when we began homeschooling, to focus on what is good about homeschooling rather than what is lacking in schools.  Maybe that’s why I’ve been able to affect so much change in the perception of homeschooling in the Orthodox world, because I’m not confrontational and I don’t look down on others.  I just share what works for me and why.

So how to respond when someone is bothered me that I’m happy with my personal choice?  When it is assumed that I look on in horror and am patronizing,  disapproving and pitying of anyone who doesn’t make the same choices that I make?

Sometime in the last six months I had a session with an energy counselor.  He is a person of deep intuition and can ‘read’ a person’s energy, and said something very interesting.  He told me that my energy was being sucked out of me by worrying so much about how someone could take any random sentence that I wrote out of context, that I had to stop worrying about ‘being nice’.  And he’s right.  It reaffirmed to me that I need to express myself as honestly and respectfully as I can, and to stop worrying about what people think.  I’m reminded of the following acronym (I don’t remember where I read this since it’s been years, but it might have been Jack Canfield) – SWSWSW – some will, some won’t, so what?  Some will like or dislike you, some won’t, so what?  It’s a freeing way to look at things.

I’m a person with strong convictions and however carefully I may try to share them, my opinions are my own and on my blog I can’t share any positions other than my own.  I’ve tried for years to be truly respectful of others and sometimes I succeed at the deepest levels and sometimes I hardly manage it even at the most superficial levels.  But overall my position in life is that everyone has to live a life that is meaningful to them and I’m not God.  It’s not my job to play judge and jury and determine who is living well and who’s not.  I pretty much assume that everyone is making the choices that work best for them.  It’s hard enough to live my life to the best of my ability and I don’t have energy left over for everyone else’s lives.  When you get too worried about what people think and adjust yourself to suit them, you are crossing the line between being thoughtful to being a codependent people pleaser.   That’s a very bad and unhealthy place to be in.

Here’s a saying that I often tell myself and have found very valuable.  In every situation, you can “take what you like and leave the rest”.  If there’s something here that you like, I’m delighted to have you reading.  If there isn’t, then the internet is overflowing with blogs and articles that will better resonate with what you’re looking for.  I’m not interested in raising ratings with controversies, I don’t care about how many people read or not – my goal is to share authentically with the intent to help others and I’d rather have a smaller readership who is benefiting  or finding reading here a positive experience than many more readers who don’t connect to what I share.

If I express my happiness in living my life in line with my values and that’s disturbing to someone, I guess I’ll have to accept that even though I wish it was different.  My life is my choice and your life is your choice, and I’m very able to differentiate between my choices and your choices.  You can’t please all the people all the time, and you can’t even please some of the people all of the time.

Avivah

When someone is in crisis – how to not say the wrong thing

miscellaneous

I’ve had my share of annoying, upsetting and deeply irritating things that have been said to me at sensitive times.  Sometimes I wondered if this was inevitable, since people can’t know what you’re feeling if they haven’t been through a situation you’re going through.  When a psychologist friend sent me the following article today, which makes what not to say to someone in crisis pretty easy to figure out.

http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407

Go read it – it will just take a few minutes and it gives a helpful strategy for determining appropriate guidelines.  Will it keep you from ever saying the wrong thing?  Probably not.  But it will make it much less likely that you’ll say the wrong thing to the person in crisis.

Avivah

Found a place for dd17 to stay next year!

miscellaneous, parenting

I am delighted to share with you that as of Friday afternoon, dd17 has found accommodations for sleeping for next year!

She will be staying with an older woman in the early stages of Alzheimers, and will receive a salary in addition to a room for her evening hours there.  When she called about this she was told there had been a lot of interest (usually with jobs like this, the work is in exchange for the room with no salary), with ten other applicants within the same hour she called.  Dd said it didn’t seem like a likely prospect for her because of the high demand, but I told her that if something is meant for her it doesn’t matter if there are another hundred applicants, and if it’s not meant for her it doesn’t matter if she’s the only applicant.

In short, they asked each applicant to send a short blurb about themselves and dd included references in her blurb.  They liked what they heard about her and asked to meet with her in Jerusalem on Thursday afternoon.  At that point they said she should be in touch on Friday after she had time to think about it, and offered her the job when she called back.  The adult children and the elderly woman herself all seem like very nice people and dd has a good feeling about the arrangement.  It is such a relief to know that she has a place to live – there are a number of details that we’re trying to take care of before she begins in another week and a half, but this was the biggest issue and resolving this has been really nice for us all.

I want to especially thank CBA, the blog reader who sent me a link to the job posting!  This was the first time in the years she’s been reading my blog that she has contacted me – she’s never contacted me privately and she was like most of you, anonymous and unknown to me.  But when I posted on Monday that we needed to find a place for dd17 to live for the coming year, she went out of her way to send me a private email with this information, rather than assume that I already knew about this job, or make another excuse for not reaching out.  So often we hear about a need someone has, we sympathetically cluck our tongues or say we’ll pray for them but we assume that someone the help will come from another direction and everything will work out without our intervention.  I’ve done it and I’m positive every one of you has sometimes responded like this as well.

The lesson that I’m taking for myself is, take a minute to really think about something when I hear about a need someone has, to really think if there’s a way that I can be of help.   I’m busy, really busy, and it’s hard to make the mental time but it doesn’t take time as much as it takes a willingness to make the headspace to briefly think about someone else.  It can be as small as giving someone a phone number they need and you have, or sending an email/ making a phone call on their behalf,   I was asked to help different people twice today  and helping each of them with something small for me but big for them, something I could have easily assumed someone else would help with since it’s not really such a big deal…. the sum total of my efforts for both situations was about about seven minutes.

Think if we each took on just one time a day or week to mentally make the effort to be of service to another, how many people could be helped.  Each of us has the potential to be the answer to a challenge that someone around us may be facing, so keep your mind and your heart open and ready!

Avivah

Not seeing the beauty in ourselves that is obvious to others

miscellaneous

A few years ago,  a friend gave me a really lovely compliment.  My response was to downplay it, and she asked me if I thought she was just saying it or that she really meant it.  It was so different from how I viewed myself that even though I knew she was totally sincere, I was visibly uncomfortable with her statement.

Last year, I was talking to her about my experience with someone who couldn’t see the amazing and beautiful person she was; she felt ugly and it didn’t matter how many people told her otherwise.  While we were talking, my friend asked me, “Do you remember what I once told you?”  We’ve had a lot of long and deep talks but I immediately knew she was talking about the compliment she gave me, the one that I was visibly uncomfortable with because it didn’t match how I saw myself.

When I saw the following short video clip, I thought of this conversation with my friend.  I thought about how we women are so hard on ourselves, how we don’t allow ourselves to see our true beauty, external or internal – it may be blatantly obvious to those around us but we too often don’t see it.

In this video, a police forensic artist does two sketches of the same woman- one as she describes herself, one as others describe her.

Avivah

The unexpected benefits of being in a hospital – you can get so much done in one place!

health, miscellaneous

Last night dh came to the hospital to switch places with me for the evening, since we learned that Yirmiyahu will need to be here longer than I anticipated when I came on Sunday morning.  (I thought he would be released the day I came or a day later and only came with the clothes I was wearing.)  He stayed here while I went home to shower and bring back some clean clothes and toiletries.

I didn’t think I would bring my laptop because I don’t like having to worry about the theft risk, and I also enjoy the quiet time to spend with Yirmiyahu and then to rest without any competing agendas. Hospitals really aren’t the best place to catch up on a serious sleep deficiency, but I’m trying to take the opportunities I have here and there between staff coming in and out all day and all night.   But at the same time, I enjoy being able to post and connect with others and I’d like to start preparing for the seder and Pesach in general…so the laptop is here but I hope to be cautious about how much I use it.

I was only gone for three days at the hospital but that was after being home just three days after returning from the US.  I really missed the kids and it was nice to spend time with them again.  While I was home today, I took ds3 and ds5 shopping for Pesach groceries with me – this is a three way win-win: they enjoy going shopping with me, so they’re happy.  I’m happy because I get to spend time with them and I can do something that needs to be done at the same time.  And the older kids are happy because then the kids who need the most active maintenance and oversight aren’t around, so they don’t need to watch them and can spend time getting things done that they want to do.

As far as Yirmiyahu, we are hopeful that we’ll be able to come home on Sunday or Monday afternoon, just in time for Pesach!  My oldest three kids who are home (ds19, dd16, ds14) are working together to get things ready for Pesach, with dd12 and ds10 helping out.  I’m lucky to have such amazing kids and I feel incredibly lucky that this situation coincided with school vacation, which has made everything much easier for us all.

A bonus of this hospital experience is that I’m able to take care of some medical checkups that were due around now – I missed several appointments last week because of the trip to the US.  As part of his blood workup in the intensive care unit, they tested for the hematology issues and happily there’s no trace of leukemia.  He had a heart echo done a couple of days ago, something that I would have had to do after Pesach; usually there’s a six month follow up recommendation with this but because an issue with his lungs as part of this bigger issue he came in with has caused extra pressure on his heart, we need to check it again in a month.  But it looks fine right now.  Another of last week’s missed appointments was an ultrasound for his kidneys and bladder, and yesterday we had that taken care of as well.

After the ultrasound I spoke to the nephrologist (kidney doctor) yesterday – she is amazing, very caring and extremely competent and professional.  In the pediatric intensive care unit, no one really told me what was going on and I didn’t push it because I wasn’t able to talk to the doctors one on one, and having a sensitive conversation as part of a group of three to ten staff members wasn’t comfortable for me.  I got most of my information by listening in on the rounds when they discussed Yirmiyahu’s situation with the incoming staff at each shift change.  This was the first time that I was able to directly get detailed information.

When I learned that the main concern right now is a serious urinary tract infection, I was afraid that was another side effect of him getting so dehydrated.  But she said that it was caused by the kidney/bladder issue that we’ve been tracking since he was born.  So we’re lucky that it showed up now when we can take care of everything at one time and in one place.  Staying here longer is better than having had to come back another time!  I took him for the last ultrasound for this on erev Sukkos, and was told there was no sign of a problem.  When I took the results to the pediatrician, she told me that wasn’t reassuring since something structural wrong at birth and it didn’t disappear.  She said that many ultrasound technicians aren’t experienced with such small infants and because of that they probably missed the issue.  But she said it wasn’t urgent and I could wait another six months to  check it again, which is why I had made an appointment for last week.

The ultrasound results have showed the small malformation is still there, and the nephrologist felt we should bring in a urologist to consult with in case surgery is indicated.  I met with the urologist yesterday as well (I didn’t expect to be so busy at the hospital!), who will be doing a procedure tomorrow to track some things.  This procedure will determine if he needs surgery to correct this or not.  If he does need the surgery, we won’t have to take care of that for another month, so there will be a breather before having to come back to the hospital.

Yirmiyahu is still weak and his little arms and legs have bruises all over from all the blood tests but is otherwise doing great!  I don’t have a camera here but when I get home  hope to get a picture with a smile for all of you to enjoy after you’ve shared in the scary stuff we’ve gone through with him.

Avivah

The value of tears of sadness

miscellaneous, parenting, personal development

In his Power to Parent series, Dr. Gordon Neufeld teaches about the significance of frustration.

Frustration is an emotion you feel when something in your life isn’t working for you.  When faced with frustration, there are several ways that this can express itself.  The most healthy options are to 1) change the situation that frustrates you, or if you aren’t able to do something to change what is bothering you, to 2) accept that you can’t change the situation.  In order to accept the situation as it is, it requires feeling the futility of the situation, feeling the sadness of wanting something and not having it.  This is something that many of us find difficult because we have become defended from our emotions, meaning that we’ve hardened ourselves to a degree so as to not feel painful emotions, sadness about unmet desires being one of those painful feelings.

What happens when a person becomes emotionally defended?  Since they don’t allow themselves to feel the sadness of the situation, when faced with frustration it manifests as aggression (towards himself or others).  Dr. Neufeld teaches about how to help a person who is emotionally hardened find what he calls ‘tears of futility’; this is necessary for them to constructively deal with tough emotions and grow emotionally.  He talks a lot about how to do this, and one possibility is to carefully touch on painful situations to bring them to tears.  These tears are a sign of adaptive behavior and get something that can turn foul out of our systems where it can’t harm us.

Yesterday morning I was very anxious about Yirmiyahu being so sick, and as I started thinking about the possibility he’d need to be hospitalized began to tear up.  I don’t cry often, but this past week and a half I’ve had my share of tears.  I thought, “God, what do you want from me already?”  And suddenly it occurred to me, maybe He isn’t demanding something of me but giving me an opportunity.  Just as a loving parent may touch on painful topics in order to help a child experience his futility and grow, God is pushing me to find my tears.  Tears of futility (this can also be the feeling of sadness of futility without the tears) release tensions, help us come to peace about all that we are going through, and increase our emotional adaptability.

Fully feeling our sadness is an important and powerful step in  breaking down the internal barrier that separates us from our deeper selves, from others, and from God – so this is my impetus to embrace rather than resist the discomfort of the challenges I’m feeling right now.

It’s not fun but it’s good.

Avivah

Yirmiyahu is in the emergency room

health, miscellaneous

On Monday evening, my chiropractor made a space for me to come in for a visit before my return to Israel.  In addition to typical chiropractic work, she does energy work and asked me something that she never asked before: What do you want to work on today?

I told her that I feel like I’m handling things fine, but am afraid that suddenly something little is going to happen –  the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back – and I’m going to totally fall apart.

It’s a good thing we released some stress from my system since this morning would have been the point I would have cracked.

After a very stressful and draining day, I left the US on Tuesday evening.  It wasn’t an easy flight because of Yirmiyahu.  I’ve been very worried about him since he got sick on Shabbos; this has been different than anything else I’ve ever seen with him.  No matter how sick he was before, I could still see him but this time it’s like he’s someone else.  When I got back to Karmiel Wednesday evening, everyone in my family was worried when they saw him – ds5 asked me why he looks like a different Yirmiyahu than the one I took to America.

First thing this morning I asked dh to schedule a doctor’s visit for Yirmiyahu as soon as possible; I wanted to take him but was so exhausted and dizzy I didn’t think I could safely walk there so dh went instead.  He called me from the doctor’s office to say the doctor immediately put him on an iv and oxygen and insisted on directly transporting him by ambulance to the emergency room.  They’re at the ER now, and I’m waiting for an update.  Right now we only know that he’s very dehydrated (despite the large amount of liquids I’ve been giving him almost nonstop for the last few days).  For those who would like to pray for him, his name is Yirmiyahu ben Avivah Michaelah.

I’m very grateful that he’s there, and though I would have wanted to be with him at this time, I’m glad my husband is with him.  As tired as he may be, he has more physical and emotional resources than I do at this point.  Hopefully they’ll both be home soon.

Avivah

Update on situation here

miscellaneous

For the last couple of days Yirmiyahu has been sick with vomiting, diarrhea and a fever.  As the hours went by he became listless and apathetic, his lips and hands turned gray, he was hardly responding to me, and I was seriously considering taking him to the emergency room.  A little prior to this, a friend was doing energy work on him and what was showing up as the problem for him was a bacterial infection, which I assume he picked up when he went with me to visit dd at the hospital.

I reached the pediatrician on duty by phone (it was Sunday so our regular pediatrician wasn’t available) and talked through the situation with her.  She said it sounded like a virus and to keep him hydrated, then take him to a doctor in a day or two if I was still worried.   I  also asked a paramedic to look at him, who said he didn’t see any signs of dehydration. This was reassuring and though he’s still weak and under the weather, his color is better and he’s sleeping now.  I’m honestly worried but hopefully in the morning he’ll be looking and feeling more like himself; it’s been a rough week for him and a particularly hard couple of days.    So things are hopefully improving on that front.

Now for an update on dd18.  Her condition is stable but she will still need a lot of prayers.  The book of  tehillim/ Psalms is being jointly said by people across the world who have each undertaken to say a given chapter(s) every day as a merit for dds18.  For those who asked how to participate, you can email me at avivahwerner@yahoo.com, and I’ll forward your message to my dd16 who is arranging this.  If there are enough people who are interested, then she will continue distributing chapters and begin another round so that the book of Tehillim will be said a second time each day.  It can be said in English or Hebrew.

>>Please send some e-mail updates.  I don’t read the blog, yet want to know what is happening.<<

If someone is concerned, my blog is the best way to stay aware of what’s happening since my online time is very limited.  A couple of people emailed me to say they were hurt that I didn’t contact them personally with details of my trip or dd’s situation.  As I shared here, my trip was extremely sudden and I had a very short time from when I was told to come to get everything together, including passports.  The only person who was notified in advance was my mother.  I  mentioned my trip to three people I happened to see the evening before I left  (two while I was walking through the park on the way home) so that people would begin to hear and pass the word along – there was no intention to be secretive or exclusive.  My sister and sister-in-law found out about the situation by reading on my blog along with everyone else, and emailed my mother to find out what was happening.  My closest friend in Israel is Israeli and doesn’t have the internet, so she still may not be aware of anything unless she has heard something through the grapevine.   I hope that anyone who may be feeling slighted will be understanding of the situation.

Here in the US it’s the same thing; I tell everyone who I bump into why I’m here (some told me they already knew via the blog postings) but haven’t called anyone to tell them personally.

>> it is unfair to say there is no community support.  There is!!! To choose to be independent of the community is not the same as lack of community support.  I think it is lashon hara to speak badly about the community in Karmiel.  <<

It is painful for me to get a comment like this at this time and I’m disappointed that when I shared my immediate fears regarding how my family would manage without me for several months, that someone felt I was slandering my community rather than hearing my feeling of desperation when faced with some overwhelming news.  I didn’t say there was no support; what I wrote was:

>>Then this morning I was talking to someone involved with the situation, and she mentioned that I’d probably have to stay two to three months to help my daughter with her medical situation.  That timeline was so totally unexpected and I was so overwhelmed at that comment that I literally couldn’t say anything for over a full minute, and when I did I wasn’t successful at keeping my voice steady. My mind was racing.  How in the world am I supposed to leave all my kids overseas with minimal communal support for them?  ” (bold added to this post)<<

This was the first thought of several that I listed as immediately flashing through my mind as a concern.

I have a very large family and a family this size has a lot going on.  The amount of support my family will need to compensate for me being gone is significant.  I know the needs of my family and I also know the emotional strains they are feeling, and I was/am afraid that my extended absence could become a breaking point for them.  The Karmiel community isn’t actually big enough to be a community; there are some lovely people but there is no infrastructure in place to create the support that is necessary, and I don’t believe enough people will be able to get involved in a way that would keep the situation from becoming overwhelming for my family.

I’m not choosing to be independent of the community, though I am uninvolved in the specific arrangements by virtue of being 5500 miles away.  We really don’t have extra time to make calls asking people to help, but we’re very appreciative to those who approached us with concrete offers of assistance when they heard about our situation.  If you want to help out, the most helpful thing is to contact us and tell us what you’d like to do.

>>Is it possible to bring your daughter back to Israel for treatment?<<

No, this is impossible.  She would need a medical transport in order to fly and the treatment facilities for her needs are much better here.  There is a world class hospital with the specialty that she needs right here in the area.  It has taken some time to work out the insurance for all of this but once again Hashem has smoothed the path for us and done what looked almost impossible at first.

>>How long will you be in America?<<

As of Thursday, the team said that I should go home this week as originally planned and then come back after Pesach for an extended stay.  I don’t yet know if I will come with just Yirmiyahu or if the family will join me in the US for a few months to be together during this time.  There’s a lot of uncertainty right now because all decisions depend on factors that have yet to be determined regarding dd’s medical care. She will be transferring from emergency care to long term care in the very near future and our decisions will be based on the  feedback of the new intake team.  So everything is subject to change.

>>How are you managing with all the stress?<<

Physically I haven’t been feeling so great; I was severely sleep deprived even before arriving and was dizzy, headachy and nauseous for the first few days here.   The nausea and headaches have passed but I still have feelings of dizziness throughout the day.  Getting more sleep is really the answer but is hard right now; in addition to the jet lag, Yirmiyahu is waking up several times a night, and each time he wakes up it takes me a long time to fall back asleep.  In the day I’m busy and I don’t usually have a chance for a nap.  That means I haven’t slept more than 2 – 4 hours a night at the most for over a week.  For now I’m drinking a lot of water and trying to eat well and sit down as much as possible.  I know it’s just temporary so it’s not a worry as much as an annoyance.

Emotionally I think I’m doing pretty well.  However, my emotions are very close to the surface and sometimes tears will suddenly spring forth unexpectedly when talking about the situation.  So I limit my talk to the fact she’s in the hospital, things are serious but she’s being well cared for.  As far as self care, I put in a call to my amazing chiropractor yesterday and asked her if she can make time for me in her busy schedule before I leave, and a friend who does energy work has offered to do a session with me to help release some stress.  (We got together yesterday with the intent to work on this but Yirmiyahu was so sick that she worked on him instead.)

Overall my feeling right now is of great hope and positivity.  I’m reminded of the situation with Yirmiyahu following my difficult and traumatic birth.  Due to the events prior to his emergency unplanned and unattended birth at home, when the ambulance came to transport us I chose to go to a hospital I had no experience with.  I later found out it had the best NICU in northern Israel, though when I chose it I didn’t know this nor did I know that Yirmiyahu would need to be in the NICU for ten days.  Similarly, I feel that this entire difficult and painful situation has been orchestrated from Above to make sure dd was in a place to get the best medical care, and things are happening to support her in a way that is nothing less than miraculous.

Avivah