(Warning: this is a long one)
Being responsible for a group a tourists sometimes means you need to spend a week in the hospital. Which is precisely how I spent much of this last week, but thankfully it was only 5 days. And also thankfully, the kid ended up not actually being sick, story to follow.
Just as I sent out last week's update, I went to check my work phone and realized it was off. My battery had died about an hour and a half earlier and when I plugged it in to recharge, I forgot to actually turn the phone back on. 30 seconds after turning it on, my phone was buzzing out of control. There were text messages and missed calls from basically everyone I work with. I quickly called someone back to find out that one of my participants had been rushed to the hospital.
Let's rewind a few days. One of my participants got sick, nothing out of the ordinary, just classic upset stomach/potential food poisoning type symptoms. After a few days with no symptom relief, he saw a doctor who prescribed some pain killers and told him to rest. He went to work the next day anyway. Since this participant works at a hospital (a different hospital than last week's story) and he was still feeling pretty off, he decided to walk downstairs and check himself into the emergency room. Anyway, when I got the call from him that he was there, I hopped in a cab to go meet him. We were there for a good 6 hours while they did a basic work up on him, including some blood tests, and they re-hydrated him with an IV (it seems that everyone who comes into an Israeli ER gets an IV regardless of why you're there - pretty sure I saw a guy with a broken leg also get an IV). In the end, they said it was probably food poisoning, they sent him home, told him to eat plain foods and prescribed the same pain killers as the previous doctor.
Now fast-forward to Friday at 5:00pm. I was just about to start cooking dinner when I had to abruptly leave and rush to the hospital. By the time I got there, my participant was already checked in to his own semi-private room (with an incredible view of the Mediterranean Sea, may I add). The doctor explained that one of his blood tests from the previous day's visit to the ER had come back showing traces of bacteria in his blood. This, I found out, is quite dangerous and could lead to heart damage, which is why the hospital had actually sent a cab to pick up my participant from his dorm and bring him directly to the hospital. No one I have spoken to has ever heard of a hospital here doing that before (maybe it's because he volunteers at the hospital? such VIP treatment...). Nevertheless, he would have to stay in the hospital for at least a few days while they did more tests and pumped him full of antibiotics. I helped arrange that a few of his friends would bring him his stuff from his dorm and keep him company over Shabbat and I actually made it home just in time for candle-lighting and Matt had cooked Shabbat dinner in my place. (So glad a married someone who can also cook).
The next few days became increasingly frustrating as I spent long days in the hospital trying to get straight answers about this participant's condition. Every visit from the doctor - a different doctor each time - seemed to come with a different story and a different diagnosis. "He has bacteria in his blood, but we don't yet know what it is." "He hasStreptococcus Viridans, which is very dangerous and can cause heart damage and he needs to have an EKG right away." Back to "we still haven't gotten conclusive results on the bacteria." And then "He could be here for up to two weeks with intravenous antibiotics" to "It seems that there was a contamination in his blood test and the bacteria is not actually in his blood and he will likely be released tomorrow." And then "I don't know who told you he would be released today, but we're still waiting for conclusive results from his blood test and depending on how it comes out, he could be here for 6 weeks."
At that point I lost it and demanded to speak to the head doctor on the floor. I needed one person to tell me exactly what was going on because after 4 days of sitting in the hospital, my participant, who was now feeling completely healthy, was itching to get out of his hospital bed and, let's be honest, I was not looking forward to spending another day there either. A nurse brought me into the doctors room and I demanded to be told all the most up to date facts and when we would be getting out of there. The answer was inconclusive, they were still waiting for test results. The doctor did manage, however, to insult me in the process: "Well, maybe you just didn't understand what the doctors have been telling you. Where did you learn your Hebrew from anyway? How well can you understand Hebrew?" I told him I understand Hebrew just fine which is why I have understood that every doctor has told me something different. He then confirmed that we would not be leaving the hospital that day and sent me away.
My blood boiling with frustration, I walked down the hallway, replaying what just happened in my head, trying to hold back tears. An elderly woman, whose 85 year old husband was 2 beds away from from my participant, saw me pacing the hallway and asked me what was wrong. I sat down to speak with her and as soon as my mouth opened, the tears began to flow. I explained how I couldn't get a straight answer from a doctor, how my kid felt completely healthy and was more-or-less wasting hospital resources at this point, how I didn't know what to tell him when he kept asking me if he could just check himself out and go home, and how I felt like an idiot reporting back to my office and to the kid's parents that we still don't know what's going on after 4 days.
To calm me down, the woman just starting telling me her life story. Both she and her husband are Holocaust survivors. She was just a young girl, 5 years old, when the war ended and came to Israel on a boat full of ma'apilim, illegal Jewish immigrants trying to come to British mandate Palestine. The boat she was on was intercepted by the British and was rerouted to a detainee camp in Cyprus. After statehood was declared in 1948, she finally made it to Israel, grew up, married her husband and started a family. She had two children, a boy and a girl. Her son was later killed while serving in the IDF in the first Lebanon war. Her daughter, who had been in the hospital visiting earlier, now has children of her own and they are proud grandparents. Her husband, however, is very sick and she doesn't know how long he will have to spend in the hospital. She doesn't drive and she had to take two buses from their home just outside Haifa to come visit him that day.
I sat there and listened. Here is this woman who has suffered a tremendous amount in her life and here am I crying because a doctor insulted my Hebrew and my perfectly healthy participant is stuck in a hospital while they complete further tests. Talk about keeping things in perspective. I thanked the woman, mostly because I didn't know what to say, but also because I was honestly grateful for her opening up to me the way she did and helping me reevaluate my situation. She told me to stop thanking her and sent me away to go get myself something to eat. My participant was released from the hospital the following morning when it was confirmed that the first clood test had indeed been contaminated and he had been fine the whole time.
Later in the week I took my group to Atlit, a British mandate detainee camp near Haifa. Tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants were interned in this camp, similar to the later camps in Cyprus, between the years 1939 and 1948. The majority of my participants were unfamiliar with this part of Israeli history. As I watched their faces in near disbelief that Jews were imprisoned for trying to make their way to what would become the State of Israel, I thought of the woman in the hospital and prayed for her husband's quick recovery.
Shabbat Shalom and have a great weekends,
Stef and Matt
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