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Heart to Heart: Home Sweet Home

San Diego Jewish Times, January 13, 2006

By Gert Thaler

Home again! For a few days it looked like I was going to belong to those people who say, “You can’t go home again,” but, in the hands of the Israeli medical system, I debunked the words and I’m back, in far better shape than I have been in years.

After a harrowing trip through unplanned for, extremely cold Canadian weather I landed in Israel on Oct. 28 knowing that parts of my anatomy were not functioning like they were meant to. Breathing was a major problem and the hotel bed was a welcome sight for the first 24 hours. As the clock struck midnight on Oct. 29, I called a friend and whispered, “Help me, I can’t breathe!”

Within minutes the Mogen David Adom ambulance and a skilled team of medics were in my room and I was rushed to Ichilov Hospital, the largest medical facility in the heart of Tel Aviv.

 How lucky I was not to have been in China, or Iran, or maybe even in some other major capitol city of Europe. In those five weeks I was to discover just how advanced Israeli medicine is and find the most skilled nurses to care for me with a tremendous outpouring of love during the lowest periods of this so-called “adventure.” What began as pneumonia took a deep turn and within days tubes and needles and oxygen machinery were all part of my wardrobe.

I did not speak for two weeks. For Gert Thaler that set a record! Pen and paper were my communication tools and my handwriting came out as gibberish for a good part of the time. One night I wrote “Somebody help me!” I had awakened discovering my throat incision, as well as something between my lips, plus both arms being fed by tubes from an overhead apparatus supporting plastic bags of life-sustaining medicine. I floated in and out of the real world, and dreamland was where I resided in the early days of this confinement.

I began this Israeli trip a resident of the Intensive Care Unit on the 3^rd floor of Ichilov Hospital, only to be transferred a week later to the Super ICU floor where I remained for a good part of this journey. Watched over by the majority of nurses born in Russia and trained through Tel Aviv University’s School of Medicine, of which Ichilov serves as the main artery, the 24-hour vigils administered to me went far above and beyond duties ever experienced in any San Diego medical facility.

Each day started out with the top ranking Israeli Professor Marcelle Topilsky leading his team of doctors, each with their own specialty, at my bedside, listening to the beat of my heart and the rumbles of my lungs. Within days I developed a serious allergy and my body was covered from toes to eyelashes with ugly black spots.

And that was how my daughter, Linda Neiman, found me as she rushed from Ben Gurion Airport to my bedside. Long ago I knew I had a great daughter. Forget parental ties, for we have always enjoyed a close friendship as well. Remaining with me through the ordeal she checked into The Hotel Vital, a new facility attached to the hospital accommodating patients’ families, as well as allowing me to return for outpatient treatment for the 10 days we remained in Israel after my discharge.

Other hotel guests included a lady from Nigeria accompanied by a nurse and her doctor/son, and when I inquired why they had come to Israel, their answer filled my heart with pride. “Because we know the best doctors are here to perform the delicate surgery needed for her.”

Israel’s ICU is unique in that eight of us were each in our own space surrounded by drawn curtains but still able to view activity. I was the only non-Israeli in both ICUs. Family members of the other seven Israeli patients came and went at all hours and several of them came to my bedside to wish me well. Medical staff is on around-the-clock duty within five feet of each patient, allowing every request to be immediately granted.

In the third week of confinement I was transferred to a private ICU room, as are all patients suffering with life-threatening maladies in a completely different floor of the hospital. It was here I would be introduced to highly trained nurses.

In 1980 former San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson had asked me to escort him on his first trip to Israel and be in charge of his stay. You can well imagine my pride in being given carte blanche by Wilson and the Israeli Consulate to go full steam ahead, and no request was turned down. His Honor still recalls the 3 a.m. ride to Lod Airport (renamed Ben-Gurion) and our meeting a planeload of Russian immigrants as he stood at the foot of the plane’s steps with outspread arms in a welcoming gesture. Each person embraced Wilson shouting “Shalom, shalom!” thinking he was an Israeli, and even later as we spent time with them in dramatic interviews he never clarified his position. Over and over again we were embraced and tears flowed freely.

 I recalled that incident as I lay immobile for two weeks in the privacy of my ICU room. I’d had mixed feelings about so many Russians being absorbed by Israel and what their lives would be like. Little did I realize that without such Russians, Israel would have been a loser in the population explosion it enjoys today. While all of my Russian-born nurses received their medical prowess in Israel, there is a special something that sets them apart in applying themselves to patient care. And I was lucky enough to be one of those recipients.

There were days of pain for me, accompanied by tears, and while I have forgotten much of the five weeks I recall very clearly the fact that I begged the professor to “Help me to live,” and his whispering in my ear his promise to do his best to keep me alive.

Still unable to speak, I awakened at 2 a.m. on an early December morning and drew a picture of a large birthday cake and showed it to the Director-General of the Tel Aviv Foundation and to the USA representative with whom I work. “I want the cake sent to the new school and the 35 children to celebrate my 85^th birthday on Dec. 13.” It would complete the purpose of my going to Israel on this trip, for along with Jaime Brener and my daughter and son-in-law, Linda and Harvey Neiman, we had provided a much-needed new school building to be built in one of Tel Aviv’s low income neighborhoods, and Brener and I were on hand for the dedication and ribbon cutting.

Three days after being admitted to the hospital I signed a release over the objections of the medical staff, and with a mixed bag of energy and strength I was able to give a speech to the audience consisting of many personal Israeli friends and other Foundation supporters before throwing in the towel and returning to my hospital bed.

Doctors thought I was acting foolishly; nevertheless, each one gave me a thumbs-up for our mitzvah gift to their city.

I shall be forever grateful to Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, who turned up at my bedside morning after morning, climaxing the whole incident on my birthday with lunch beside the Mediterranean Sea.

My Israeli friends showered me with love and attention as I slowly and surely recuperated and went from four weeks of being a bedridden patient to a wheelchair, thence a walker and finally returning home relying on the use of a cane to steady my walking ability, until now when I have made a complete recovery.

San Diego doctors were in communication with the Israeli medical team constantly, and no amount of expressed appreciation would be sufficient to say how grateful I am.

Surprises? Opening my eyes one late night, seeing a man’s face and trying to form the words, “Who are you?” only to find out it was Gary Jacobs who had come to my bedside directly from the airport. He held my hand, stroked my cheek and next morning I needed confirmation from my nurse that he had been there. Dr. Barry Kassar flew in from London in order to be with a close personal friend who was ill, and then shared his time with me as well. Phone calls, cards and e mail poured in from San Diego and other places, all of which had great affect on my recovery.

As the days go by, small tidbits are recalled of those early weeks of illness and my despair. As sick as I was, I lived those five hospitalized weeks seeing Israeli patients even more seriously ill. Because I was spared and given back my good health, I know I will never again have such an experience of the TLC of the doctors, nurses and staff of Ichilov Hospital.

My granddaughter, Shelley Neiman, is holding on to my passport and claims she is going to burn it since it does not expire for two more years and she doesn’t trust me not to look at plane schedules, claiming I have a short memory recall process. My protesting only made her find a new hiding place.