Wrestling with Tigers

Israel. It means “wrestling with G-d,” something I anticipated doing when I made aliyah. After all, I live in the holy city of Jerusalem. I didn’t, however, anticipate wrestling with tigers, another experience afforded to me here in my humble abode.

Yesterday was my one-month anniversary of freedom. One month ago, I was released from the Bikur Holim hospital** in Jerusalem, Israel. One month ago, I walked home from the hospital, hunched over in pain and ready to lie down from my long journey—the one block home from the hospital.

Being in the hospital can work wonders on your life (and your appendix). My hospital story goes like this . . .

December 29th, 2005, I flew to the United States for my brother’s wedding.
January 20th, 2006, I set foot in Israel again.
The Sunday after my arrival, January 23rd, I woke up in the middle of the night in more pain than I’ve ever felt.


The scene: 1am, Becky’s Bedroom, where sugar plum fairies dance to the bass rhythm of Nadav’s snoring and Becky rolls over once again, holding her stomach, and promising G-d that if it the pain stops, she’ll never again eat tomato-cream sauce and chocolate cake in the same meal, for real this time.

“Nadav . . .”
“Mrrmpght . . .”
“Nadav?”
“Yeah?” (sleepily)
“I’m really hurting . . .”
“Mrrpghth”
“Nadav?”
“Yeah, can I do something? Do you think you should go to the hospital?”
“Maybe . . . I’ve never had pain this horrible from eating a bad food.”
“Ok, (mmrthphopth) I’ll call my mom (she’s a nurse).”

After describing my symptoms in several languages, it was decided that I should go to the hospital, with a likely case of either food poisoning (my bet) or appendicitis (Nadav’s mother’s idea). After succeeding in waking my soundly sleeping roommate, we asked which hospital to go to. “Anywhere but Bikur Holim,” she replied. (See starred name of hospital above for comic relief and the set-up of the continuation of this story)

So, we walked the 300 yards to . . . Bikur Holim. We didn’t know where the ER was, so while Nadav ran to find it, he asked some guys walking down the street at 2am to “watch me.”
“Becky, these guys are going to watch you?”
(Note: I forgot my glasses at home)
“What, you’ve asked random guys walking the streets at 2 am to ‘watch me’?!? Have you lost your mind?”
As they got closer, I saw heard American English and saw they were 19-year-old yeshiva kids, coming home from a night at the bar. “Ok, fine, just hurry,” I replied and tried not to look like I was dying.

We made it to the ER and what Nadav anticipated being a “walk-in-walk-out” visit (his later justification for taking me to the only place UN-recommended by my roommate) became a hospitalization, a surgery, and a scar the size of the Eiffel Tower.

My hospital room, which was a steamy 102 degrees Farenheit, housed, not native plants of the tropical rainforest, but rather an old religious woman, a survivor of Auschwitz, whose first language was Yiddish and who snored like a lumberjack. She was in need of a pacemaker and heart medication, and before she would agree to either (in the end, she agreed to neither), she needed to check with her rabbi. The third occupant was a religious woman who—like me—was also having stomach pains and who—like me—waited an inordinate amount of time for an ultrasound. My final roommate was a Muslim young woman with a broken nose, who, so sweet and quiet, cried in pain until a nurse found her and chastised her in Arabic, “Why didn’t you tell me you were in pain?!?”

To enrich your vision of the scene, remember, I was in the “Surgery Ward,” which means, “Everyone is fasting in preparation for surgery (and so therefore weak and falling over) or everyone has already had surgery (and so therefore drugged up on painkillers and falling over). Please note that all over the world the usage of hospital gowns that bare your ass to the world when you are least prepared to handle the situation is encouraged.

To further enrich your image, let me just tell you right now, that there are lots of things in Israel that on the cutting edge of technology. Bikur Holim hospital . . . not one of them.

Enter . . . . my doctors (not one of which was born in Israel, America, England, Western Europe, oh forget it, anywhere but Russia)

I guess my real question about my doctor is . . . why did he seem so professional when explaining to me the necessity of an appendectomy and having me sign the documents, and as soon as I agreed, he turned into Binky the Clown?

“Did you make pee pee?” he asked me, after my first round of injections of anesthesia pre-operation.
“No, I forgot.”
“Ooops, you’re going to have to use a bed pan.”
“Urgh.”
(Becky using bed pan to the background music of “The Pee-Pee Song” performed by Surgeon Binky)
“Oh, G-d, this is the guy doing the surgery . . . . this cannot be gooooo . . . wow, that feels good . . . why is this mask over me . . . woooooo”

Awake.
Hell.
Pain.
Cold, freezing, shaking visibly off the bed, PAIN.
Rambling in Hebrew, English, Jibberish.
Throat burning from breathing tube being ripped out while conscious.
Lips burning from tape being ripped off while conscious.
Tears streaming, body convulsing, lungs bursting, flashes of roommates, friends, my love, touching my hair, my legs, lights dimmed, beeping, beeping, beeping, sticky, everywhere. Sleep.

Morning. I’m alive. I feel like I’ve been run over by a bulldozer, but I’m alive. Nadav slumped over on a cot the length that he was when he was 4 years old. Can’t move without his help. They’re telling me I have to urinate. But I haven’t drunk anything in 36 hours, eaten anything in more. “Well, you really need to. Let us know when you have.” “Okkkkkkk . . . ”

And that, as far as I can tell, is what being in the hospital is about. Everyone caring about your bodily fluids, etc. They wouldn’t let me eat for two more days, but they somehow expected me to do, well, the impossible. I wanted to explain that theory of matter we learned in sixth grade, something about matter not being created from nothing. But, I was on painkillers, which means I basically just sat around reading, sleeping, getting my cell phone stolen, and walking to the bathroom propped up by an IV stand while trying not to let people see my ass.

And then the day I was able to do number #2 (you know what I mean), they let me go. I got out alive. I felt better. I feel better. I do wonder why in a city that has wireless internet in its entire downtown and each person owns two cell phones they didn’t use micro-surgery, why I’m left with a two-inch gash for which the only response I have is, “Well, you should see the tiger I wrestled with—now he looks bad.” But, I’m ok. I made it out. I saw the concern in my friends’ eyes. They saw the appreciation in mine. And I came to realize what most people who make it out of the “darkness” of anesthesia and surgery realize—that wrestling with tigers is like wrestling with G-d. You come out knowing what’s important in life, even if they did forget to give you your appendix in a jar.