That's Life 11-7-08

Dear That’s Life,

Crazy follows me everywhere.

On the second night of our family trip to Israel, my husband left the apartment we were renting to take out the garbage –– an annoying but otherwise innocuous activity... or so it should have been.

In the process, he nicked his ankle on some freshly cut s’chach (palm branches, in this case) that were lying on the ground near the garbage bins. We thought nothing much of it, although the small cut seemed to bother him.

Within a number of hours, in the middle of the night, the situation had drastically changed. Running a fever and in a sweat, he was in immense pain and could not bear any weight on the foot that had been nicked. Hearing someone shuffling in the middle of the night and going into our machsan (storage area), I thought we were being robbed, until I realized what was going on. In 14 years together, I had never seen him in that much pain; he was in agony.

A little over two hours later, at the behest of my cousin who told us we could not wait to seek medical assistance, we were at Terem, a well-respected emergent care facility, by 6:20 a.m. While I had not thought twice about that little nick, it seemed to be the source of the trouble. My biggest concern, of course, was for him to be seen by an American doctor. What a fool I was.

The staff at Terem knew exactly what to do; we were not original, it seems. “Palm is notorious for infectious diseases,” they told him. “We see this every Sukkot.” With that, he had a full blood work up, an x-ray and an ultrasound of the area to make sure there was no foreign body that had broken off from the palm and lodged itself in his foot. When the test work was consistent with the diagnosis, he left Terem with several prescriptions: one for a heavy dose of antibiotics and another for painkillers. Once he returned home, we piled into our rental car to get to the pharmacy on Emek Refaim as soon as possible. After the prescriptions were filled, I had an epiphany.

It was ironic that we had to be in Israel to get the proper medical care. While I was so concerned that the doctor be an American, in fact, we needed to have a doctor who lived in Israel.

Had we been in Woodmere and gone to one of our local hospitals with this unique injury, they would have given him a band-aid for his cut, and maybe even drawn a smiley-face on it, before sending us on our way. Who would have known about the disease s’chach carries, anywhere but there? The beauty was that we had to be in Israel to have received the proper medical care. Then again, as one person pointed out, there are no palm trees in Woodmere.

So cynical.

MLW

If something happened to you “that could only happen around here,” you’ve got to share! Was it funny? Outrageous? Hopefully, it wasn’t too painful. No matter what, if you type it up and sent it to

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