Birthday Party

Last Wednesday was my friend Rachel’s birthday.  We had a classic Israeli nursing home birthday party: songs, birthday blessings, a homemade birthday card from the nursing home, presents, and Kosher for Passover cake and soda/pop.  I had a piece of cheesecake and some Sprite.  Every so often the diet needs a holiday.

Now that I think of it, I was in two different nursing homes in Massachusetts and I don’t remember us ever having a birthday party on the ward. The family would come and have a private party, but nothing official like we have here.

I spent a year in Palace, a private nursing home in Tel Aviv.  They threw one party each month for everyone on the ward who had had a birthday that month.  I got to go to them all because I sang with the music therapist who played the parties.  It was challenging, because there are several different Hebrew birthday songs, and he played them all. I still don’t know all the words.  Here is a translation of the one song I know well:

Today is the birthday, today is the birthday

Today is the birthday of Rachel

Celebrate her with joy and crown her with flowers

Today is the birthday of Rachel

Some people do wear flowers.  The December birthdays at Palace included me and Menasseh, a truly formidable old man who sat at the table behind me.  We were always bumping chairs and we must have done so at the party:  there is a picture of him glaring at me from underneath his crown of flowers.

May you live to be 120!  (Israeli birthday blessing).

 

 

 

Snippets that I’ve written but never posted

January 7 or 8, 2019:

I am going to try to start this weblog again. There is no way of knowing if I ever will escape from the nursing home, but if I will, this is the beginning.

After years of waiting, they have finally installed a lift in the ceiling of the therapy room at the Center for Multiple Sclerosis. Last week, for the first time, they were able to lift me onto the tilting bed. They strapped me on, tilted me up to 35° and left me there for 20 minutes. My legs were so excited to be bearing weight again. Afterwards I was a little dizzy. My body has to relearn how to regulate my blood pressure when I am standing.

The other new thing is that I finally got approved to be in the swimming pool  independenrly (without a therapist). In theory I can now be in the pool four days a week.

I can walk across the pool, stand on the ladder (1-1/4 minutes), and do leg exercises that I can’t do out of the water. If I am sitting on the water chair and trying to straighten my legs, I can get my feet to move a couple of inches. This is an improvement from the first day, when they barely moved a millimeter.

When I tried to start this weblog a couple of years ago, I had many great plans. Now my goals are more modest. If I can manage to write on a semi-regular basis, and then actually post what I write, I will be happy.

 

Mid-February:

A lot has happened. My sister passed away (the other way to leave the nursing home). I went to the funeral, sat Shiva, finished the required 30 days of mourning, and returned to normal life. In some ways, that’s harder. When I’m happy, smiling or singing or dancing, it all rushes back and I start to cry. When I went to the Tuesday concert I had to keep putting my blanket over my head. I can’t go back for a while, which is probably a good thing.

 

April 23, 2019 = Today:

It’s Chol Hamoed Pesach (the middle of Passover).  I worked in front of the ladder in PT and actually managed to raise myself a few inches off the chair.  My muscles are so happy when they are working.

My friend Lena finally got taken to the ER after a week of being in pain.  It totally justifies the time I went to the ER without asking the doctor’s permission (I was already at the hospital).  Spending hours or possibly days trying to convince them that I needed an X-ray would have driven me crazy.  My hand was badly bruised, but not broken, and I had to pay for triage.  So worth it.  It turns out that Lena’s arm is inflamed, which is a lot more painful then it sounds.  (I had that happen a few years ago.  Wow.)

It was a good concert today, Gidi Savon, who sings in many languages, and started his career doing concerts of songs in Yiddish and songs from Texas.  I only cried once, when he was doing an old train song.  My sister would have loved it,

Chag Sameach!

 

Return to the Blog

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile.  Even wrote a couple of entries.  Someday I may post them.

Six years ago today I entered my first nursing home, Amal BaSharon in Ranana, Israel.  I was 53 years old at the time, so I was quite amused to hear the day nurse tell the evening nurse that I was young and innocent.

The first day I was on a ward for people who couldn’t talk, but when I moved upstairs, I got to experience the life of a hot chick.  I was more than 20 years younger than anyone else on the ward, and that was all I needed.  Men were coming up to me all day long, wanting to talk with me and offering me food from their private stash.  A 90+ year old man who had the only private room even invited me to check out his bed.  (I didn’t.)

Initially I enjoyed the attention and the crackers, but after awhile having men constantly approaching me got to be a bit much.  I was relieved when things settled down and I could rest when I wanted to without being bothered.  Still I am glad for the experience and I developed an unexpected sympathy for the trials of super-attractive girls.

 

Not yet.

I wrote all these ideas about what I would like this blog to be.  But today I think I will just write for me.  Not many posts yet, not many people following me.  That’s okay.  I don’t have the energy to do all the things you are supposed to do – follow other blogs, make comments, get yourself out there.  It’s not that there aren’t other people I would like to follow – there are – but I can’t right now.

I believe in G-d / a higher power / fate.  This thing is meant to be or it isn’t.  In the meantime, the most important thing is at least to write something.

I understand why people who haven’t walked as long as I haven’t walked don’t walk again.  (Good luck parsing that sentence.)  There are so many things that your body forgets how to do when you spend all day in a wheelchair or in bed.  I tried sitting up straight this morning.  That didn’t last long.  Other challenges – holding up my head, bending and straightening my legs, leg lifts, moving my legs from side to side, wheelchair walking; all these are things I could do a few years ago, but I stopped  practicing and lost them.  So I have to start from zero again.

At the same time I was working on hands, fingers, arms and shoulders.  They can do things now that I didn’t even dream were possible when Anat, the amazing occupational therapist, was working with me three and a half years ago.  For example. I am using all ten fingers to type this.

The fingers are getting tired now.  Exhaustibility, one of my favorite MS symptoms.  So I guess I’d better write what I need to hear:

I can imagine not being able to do this.  I can imagine failing to walk again.  I can imagine a day when it’s time to stop trying.  I hope it doesn’t come to that.  Today is not that day.  But I do understand that such a day could come.

When I was trying to escape from the nursing home in the U.S., a key question was how do I know if G-d is saying ‘No’ or ‘Not yet.’  The clear limit was the airplane door.  If I couldn’t get on the plane, that would be ‘No .’  Once I was on the plane, it became their problem to get me off (and on and off the next plane).  I did make it back to Israel.

As for now, I didn’t fall on the floor and break bones last month when the lift broke when I was in it – it just gave an extra spin.  The dramatic crash occurred a few minutes later.  So I am sticking with a belief in ‘Not yet’ for now.

My fingers are toast, so it’s time to post.