It was the best night’s sleep I had had since my open-heart surgery. Almost three weeks into my successful recovery, I felt I had reached the point of independence and relative comfort that had allowed me to enjoy a long night of deep sleep, alone in my room in Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem’s Sarah Wetsman Davidson Hospital Tower. My wife and life-mission partner, Ira, was sleeping close by at the hospital’s hotel. We kissed goodnight the night of October 6th and I woke up at 6:30 am on Saturday, October 7th, with a bright smile, looking forward to going home that day. As the executive director of Hadassah International, Hadassah’s global advocacy and fundraising arm, I have felt that Hadassah Ein Kerem has been my “home” for the last 13 years. And now I had experienced the hospital in a new way, as a patient receiving outstanding care and treatment from the medical teams of the hospital I love.
When I woke up, I automatically extended my hand to reach for my phone, a movement that wasn’t yet as easy as it is now, months later. I opened the phone and saw the first strange thing of the day: two of my teenage children, who were sleeping in different cities in the Tel Aviv area, had written to tell me that I shouldn’t worry, that they were okay. It was 6:30 in the morning on a Saturday! As typical adolescents, they would both normally still be asleep, with many more hours to go before they would open their eyes.
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