From Yarden - My Wife Has Cancer — And I’m Going for a Bike Ride

Crossing the Yarden..
12 October '12..

We moved to Israel seven years ago to “live the dream” of a better life for ourselves and our children. And for six years, with fulfilling jobs and a wonderful community, our lives did indeed feel dreamlike.

And then the dream went dark.

It all started when the Doctor said: “It’s definitely cancer.”

My wife Stella was diagnosed with late stage stomach cancer last year. In fifteen months, we have faced chemo, operations, and more unpleasantness than I could ever have imagined. Yet Stella has never stopped smiling.

From her childhood in Ithaca, New York to our college days at Colgate University to our first real community in Potomac, Maryland to our current home in Neve Daniel, Israel, Stella has touched the lives of thousands of people.

If you look up kindness in the dictionary, you will see Stella’s picture. If you look up modesty, there she is again. And if you look up compassion — once again it’s Stella. Just ask anyone who knows her and they will tell you that she is simply amazing. I basically won the lottery to have such a wife.

And so many of these people are now desperate to try and help Stella as she struggles with what feels like a non-stop fight against a deadly disease. People are demanding to “do something” to try and help. And of all those people, I am at the top of the list of those who just need to do something to try and help her.

Stella doesn’t like making trouble. She doesn’t speak badly of anyone. The only one she has an issue with is the Waze lady. (Sorry but Ms. Waze IS a better navigator.) She is always willing to back off to preserve peace. She offers an amazing smile to everyone she meets.

But that’s not me. Not even close.

Out of Zion came the lifesavers

Judy Siegel
Health and Sci-Tech/JPost
27 February '10

Shaare Zedek Medical Center staffers who treated Haitian earthquake victims describe how procedures and conventions are adapted when a hospital is a collection of tents amidst chaos.

Some of the pillars of sound medical practice have to fall by the wayside when doctors and nurses treat desperate victims of mass catastrophes at a field hospital set up in the middle of hell. None of the sick or wounded is asked for his informed consent; providing privacy is an undreamed-of luxury; patients may be chosen according to who can be discharged soonest; cesarean sections are avoided if possible; and highly complex treatments are not given to victims who haven’t a chance of survival outside.

But other features of normal hospital procedures were used by members of the Israel Defense Forces team that flew to Haiti less than 24 hours after the horrific earthquake that shook Port-au-Prince six weeks ago. The doctors appointed an ethics committee to decide which victims should be admitted and which had a reasonable chance of survival. At least one of the staffers served as a medical clown to make patients smile in lieu of speaking their language. And each patient was discharged – usually to the street – with a CD containing his personal medical file, including x-rays and scans, for use in the event that he received professional follow-up later in the poorest country in the Americas.

The Israeli facility, set up as neatly arranged tents in a soccer field in the capital’s center and opened within hours of arrival, was staffed by a 121-member team with 40 doctors, 20 nurses, 20 paramedics and medics, 20 lab and X-ray technicians and administrators. Three of the physicians and one of the nurses who served there were staffers of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center, while another worked with a separate nonprofit group in the disaster area. They thus constituted the largest delegation from any single Israeli hospital.

Two weeks ago, some 300 Shaare Zedek staffers crowded into the medical center’s Steinberg auditorium at 8 a.m. to attend an in-house clinical conference presented by the five who had returned from Haiti, armed with objective medical reports and emotional commentary and photos.

(Read full story)
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