Shalom! Welcome Back to Israel! 5/31/2007

After a very busy few weeks and nothing but the best care at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, Goldie and I were given the authorization to (finally) return home and we did so last Sunday.

Goldie has been recovering well from her surgery. Boruch H-shem, the tumor was completely removed and the operation went well with an excellent result. Without too many unnecessary details I will simply say that the type of cancer she had was extremely rare, and that she has an excellent prognosis for a full recovery without the need for any further treatment.

As I begin to collect my thoughts and we return to our normal everyday life, I am struck more and more by the extreme kindness that we were blessed with in Goldie’s being stricken with double vision, an ailment from which she still suffers and we hope to have a complete recovery from in the near future. Without this ailment, which our doctors feel was totally unrelated to the cancer, we would never have discovered or dealt with the tumor.

The list of “it just so happened” events are too long to count. “It just so happened” that the regular neurologist for our health plan was out of the country and we had to go outside the plan to a different neurologist when the double vision first came on. The result? This doctor, against the opinion of most of the other physicians kept pursuing the diagnosis and inadvertently discovered the tumor.

“It just so happened” that Goldie’s brother has experience with helping a relative who has lung cancer. The result? We had a directory of physicians, experts in the field to consult with and knew from the get go who would be the best choice, since all the research into the doctors had already been done.

“It just so happened” that Goldie’s brother was a chavruta (study partner) in Israel with someone who currently owns imaging centers and literally opened the doors to us when we first arrived and were having complications in getting the initial scans approved by the insurance company. The result? We were able to provide the doctors with the necessary information to aggressively move forward and schedule the surgery much quicker than we had any hope to expect.

The list goes on and on. But, perhaps most importantly, “IT JUST SO HAPPENED” that through these pages and the internet that we had exposure to literally thousands of people. The result? Goldie was the beneficiary of thousands of peoples davening for her complete recovery. She had hundreds of Tehillim groups and Shmiras Haloshon groups praying for her. Several Yeshivos had their students saying Tehillim in her Zechut (merit) every single day. There were people taking upon themselves additional personal mitzvot and dedicating them to her zechut.

Clearly, there is no such thing as “it just so happened”. As I have written before, the experiences we have had in coming to Israel and acclimating to our new home have repeatedly shown us that there is no such thing as a coincidence or happenstance and that there was clearly a reason that we needed to have all these things in place for us.

The hundreds of emails and messages we got from everyone were so supportive and so encouraging to us that we were confident and hopeful that H-shem would answer these tefillos with a cure and recovery for Goldie, and we know without a doubt that each and every person who davened, learned, did an extra mitzvah or whatever they personally could do was a significant part of Goldie’s recovery and we are extremely grateful to all of you for making us a part of your lives and prayers.

Of course, she still has a long recuperation from major surgery ahead as well as what we hope is a diagnosis and cure for the double vision as well. So we ask that you continue to think of us and daven for a Refuah Shleima for Golda Susya Bat Shoshana and all Cholei Yisrael.