Into the Abyss

Many people have spent the last six months wondering if they would get Covid. I was not one of them. I never thought I would get it.

I was wrong.

 For the last few weeks, our family has been watching Israel’s Covid nightmare spiral out of control. From a Covid perspective, the country seems to have its head in the sand, each sector pointing fingers at the other and everyone blaming the leadership while not taking responsibility for their own behavior and that of their community.

Even if they’ve been nominally Covid-protected by masks and social distancing, there have still been hundreds of gatherings that have enabled the virus to spread. At the mass public protests among the secular Jews.  At the weddings and funerals in the Arab and Hareidi sectors.  At the schools of all stripes that have opened up.  At the seminars, yeshivot and mechinot (pre-Army programs).    

After several weeks or rapidly increasinging rates of contagion, the government decided (in fits and starts, with reversal after reversal up to the very last moment), to finally issue a three week lockdown (seger) from Rosh Hashanah through the end of Sukkot, which is about three weeks.

Our friends Julie and Josh decided to fly back to the US for the lockdown, and their house abuts my sister’s house, so last Wednesday we changed our holiday plans and came to Ra’anana to spend the month with my sister’s family and my parents.  We envisioned a lively three weeks of socially distant outside meals, but at least we would be together.

Suffice it to say, things didn’t go as planned.  One child came home achy and exhausted. His Covid test came back positive. On the 2nd day of Rosh Hashanah, I felt a telltale tickle in my throat and an ensuing dry cough. I spent Sunday and Monday in bed.  On Tuesday, I felt well enough to drive the rest of the kids and myself to a testing site, this one with pre scheduled appointments in four minute intervals.  

We got out of the car in a largely empty parking lot, save for a makeshift testing site.  Confusion ensued–we didn’t have the proper referral from a family doctor.  My sister–who had already spent hours on the phone setting the appointments up–negotiated with the test administrator’s supervisor, and explained that we had just made aliyah, that we didn’t have a family doctor, etc., I stood in silence, aware that my vision was getting blurry in the hot September sun.  I went back and sat in the hot car, my eyes closed, my head back.  Finally, my sister convinced the testers to go ahead and swab us.  The mask-covered young woman in jeans and a black t-shirt motioned us into the tented testing booth at the parking lot’s edge.  As I approached, the ground began to bend, and I wondered if I would be able to make it to the edge of the lot, about ten feet away.  Stumbling just a little, I took a few more steps, and then sank into the dirt and leaves, unconscious.

I lay on the grass, convulsing, my skin turning white and my lips blue.  My children watched, their eyes wide, their mouths open.  Through the heavy fog of returning from an impossibly deep sleep, I dredged open my eyes, only to see my 14 year old daughter swoon and faint in front of me.  I passed out again.

By this time, my sister was desperately calling for help (although she has seen me faint before so she wasn’t panicking).   Since I had passed out at a Corona testing site, self-evidently ill, the crowd was backing farther and farther away.  Finally, someone yelled out the number to call an ambulance, and within minutes, it arrived.  

The short, swarthy paramedic was as gruff and coarse as the stubble on his face.  My sister asked him if he could take me to her house.  “What do you think I am, a taxi?”  He said in Arabic-accented Hebrew.  “I can leave her here or take her to the hospital.”

My sister turned to me.  “What do you want to do, Sara?” At that point I was still a few galaxies away, her voice only entering my brain through an almost impenetrable fog. I tried to remember how to speak.  I couldn’t.  “Do you want to go to the hospital?”  I nodded.  At that point, I did not have the strength to move my limbs.  Getting in and out without the help of others was impossible.  And getting help would mean likely giving Covid to whatever helpful souls reached out to support me.  The paramedics wheeled me into the ambulance, and I passed out again. 

And so it was that I ended up spending Tuesday afternoon in the Meir Medical Center Hospital in Kfar Saba.

The attendant admitted me directly to the Corona triage room, a long narrow chamber with about 20 beds, 10 on each side, with curtains that could be wrapped around to create a false semblance of privacy. The paramedics wheeled me to a bed, and I crawled onto the narrow mattress.  Still too weak to sit up, I realized I really had to find a restroom.  Immediately. Darn that Corona.  Also, I quickly realized that in addition to not knowing where a restroom might be I also didn’t have my glasses–I vaguely remembered a child telling me he took them when I fainted in the leaves and dirt.

Despite feeling like crawling would have been the better option, I walked like a hunched biped towards the end of the triage room.  A nurse had indicated the restroom was in this direction, but where exactly?  Everything looked fuzzy.  This door?  A water closet.  This door?  A sink.  Who has a room with just a sink?  This door?  I wasn’t going to make it much longer.  Finally, a tiny room holding one small, porcelain toilet bowl.  My head still swimming, I sat down, trying not to think about the very real likelihood that I would faint again in this closet of the room, and no one would ever find me. Or worse, someone would find me.  All options were bad.  I concentrated on the task at hand.

Finally, I gingerly stood up and fumbled for the door and set forth back into the triage room.  WIthout my glasses nothing was clear. Where the heck was my bed?  How would I find it?  First of all, I couldn’t see.  Second of all, all the beds looked the same, as hospital beds are wont to do. 

Stumbling forward, I veered towards the first empty mattress on the right, as frankly, I wasn’t sure I could walk much farther.  Strangely, it was littered with twigs and leaves. What kind of hospital is this?  I wondered.  Did some vagabond wander in off the street and they never even cleaned his bed?  I absently reached up to my hair and a small twig and dead leaf fluttered down.  I tried to figure out what was going on.  Thinking as quickly as a hibernating bear, something clicked.  I collapse onto the mattress. I was home.   

Over the next few hours, as one, and then another bag of IV fluid began to drip through my veins, I slowly regained strength, and I tried to assess my situation.  On the one hand, I was in a hospital, with many other patients who thought they had Corona but weren’t sure.  Should I be worried they would infect me?  I decided not to be worried. I should be more worried that I would infect them. With this thought I remembered that I still actually had not gotten a Corona test, as I’d fainted just feet away from the swabbing booth.  This concern, however, was short-lived–within minutes a nurse had come, asked me if I had Corona–I said likely yes–asked me if I’d been tested–I shook my head no–and she tickled the top of my nostril with a long q tip and disappeared.  Well, at least that was done.

The doctors and nurses, about half Jewish and half Arab from what I could tell from head coverings and accents, moved around the room with the relaxed banter that one associates with doctors and nurses on a medical tv show.   Would that the whole country would feel like an Israeli hospital, where medical staff check their prejudices at the door and work together.  

The nurse in the hospital quickly ascertained that I had barely eaten or drunk in a day or two.  She hooked me up to an IV drip, and brought me a box of food.  I was curious what would be in it. Jello?  Cold chicken?  Yogurt?  To my surprise, Israeli hospital cuisine seems much like Israeli cuisine:  one raw whole persian cucumber, one whole tomato, one whole nectarine, a roll, and some techina and gevina levana (a dairy spread that is the intermediate step between sour cream and yogurt).  Still not very hungry, the food felt nourishing and I felt a bit better. 

Over the next few hours, as they checked my pulse and blood pressure and even x-rayed my lungs, I slowly regained my strength.  I wondered how long I would be in the hospital, if I would be destined to languish here for days and days.  Over the phone, my sister assured me that they would not keep me there one moment longer than necessary.  As if on cue, the moment my second IV drip bag finished, a male nurse appeared to disconnect it.  

“Time to leave,” he said to me in Hebrew.  “Go home.”  I sat there dumbly, not understanding.  “You’re fine.  Go home!”  And so, somewhat incredulous at the lack of bureaucracy, or forms to fill out, or lengthy discharge protocol, I picked up the shopping bag of stuff my sister had left me a few hours before, and gingerly took a step.  One foot in front of the other seemed to be working again.  I had a mask on, and other than get to the curb and wait for my sister, there wasn’t much else I could do.

My sister pulled up in her minivan a few minutes later.  I tried to stay as far away from her as possible, huddled in the back seat as she waxed poetic about the benefits of a nationalized health care system, as my whole escapade–test, ambulance ride, x-ray, hospital visit–would be almost free. 

***

The test came back positive.  I knew it would.There was hardly a reason to get tested, save the desire to be witnessed and counted as one of the day’s 6,862 new Corona cases.  

Since the tests are conducted by the nationalized HMO’s, the HMO’s also do extensive tracking, tracing and follow up on each new Corona patient.  Every patient is called individually and someone goes over the recommended behavior over the course of the illness, and what is required to release oneself from isolation, including a clean bill of health from a doctor that is only granted after three days being symptom free.

Also, a real human being calls every few days to check up on me and the two children who also tested positive, and also has given me an emergency number with a personalized code to type in should I need emergency assistance.  

While Israelis case load continues to skyrocket (215,000 and counting), and my suspicion is that it will continue to grow, it’s fatality rate (.7) is on par with the countries with some of the lowest fatality rates in the world, many of whom, interestingly, are in the Middle East. This compared with as high as almost 12% for Italy, 10% for Mexico, almost 3% for the United States. Who knows exactly what to attribute this to, but I would think that the health care system’s regular check ins with every sick patient are being effective at keeping all but the most severe cases at home, and making sure that those cases get to the hospital with enough time to be helped.

Thankfully, at this point I am feeling okay. Severe fatigue–I have barely left my bed–but the headache, cough, aches, and fever have thus far been present but mild. Each day brings new symptoms, though, so I am taking it day by day.

My sister and the healthy kids are all helping out, and those of us that have the virus are staying in our rooms and from time to time paying each other visits. Kenny has returned to J’lem to wait out the storm and we are all hoping he stays healthy.

I can’t say Covid was the new year present I was expecting, and delivered promptly on Rosh Hashanah no less.

But in some unexpected ways it is a gift. First, I no longer have to worry about getting sick.  The anxiety, the fear, the angst, the constant internal dialogue about whether or not our hygiene practices are vigilant enough, the internalization that every person is actually a carrier who has the potential to destroy my health and my family’s health and my life, the worry of how severe a case might I get if I do get it, the worry about who would take care of me, and who would take care of the kids, and who would take care of Kenny….well, now we are just in it.  What happens will happen.  No use worrying anymore.

Second, I’m very much looking forward to the antibodies on the other side. 

And third, as I start to feel better, I remind myself that my fantasy for the last 17 years or so has been two weeks of solitude in my room, with no expectations that I cook, clean, do laundry, parent, or entertain anybody else.  I even get room service delivered to my door.

I’m eternally grateful to my sister for pulling us through this, and praying that she and her family stay Covid-free. 

Who knows what symptoms the next week or two will bring.  But for now, as we enter Shabbat and then on to Yom Kippur, I’m mostly feeling grateful for the friends, family, and health care systems who are helping us pull through.

May all of us be sealed in the Book of Life.