(my friend wrote that I made no sense at all on may 19, so – for the first time – i revised the story.  it’s one long kvetch)

Here’s the story for today.  Although I have been taking beta blockers for tachycardia and atrial fibrillation for the past year, I wear 2 watches to monitor almost everything.  And since we’ve been travelling, the monitors have been showing strange signs, jumping up and down like the stock market.   So I upped my meds and continued to smile: neither solution worked.   And this morning, when we were on our way to the hospital to get Ezi a clean bill of health so we can order tickets to go home, my monitors started going crazy, warning of imminent disaster, and I was persuaded to ask the emergency people to check me out. Before that, we went in to the hospital and were told that we had been misinformed, that they could not provide a letter to allow him to fly.  Then we went out and sat down on a bench, trying to figure out our next move, and I started to think about my own health. What if we really got permission to fly and I got a stroke?   Our friend, who called at that moment to see how we had fared with Ezi’s letter, urged me to do him a personal favor and go back to ask for an anticoagulant. I knew he was right, but I really wanted to get that permission to fly over with.  I debated with myself for a few minutes, and turned back into Emergency. I could see that the resident in charge thought I was crazy, but I pressed on and told my sad tale to the nurse.  They admitted me right away and did a whole bunch of tests.  It took all day and Ezi didn’t get his ‘fit to fly’ letter, but I got examined from head to toe and came out with anti-coagulants. 

New York Presbyterian seems like an incredible place – all very polite young doctors and nurses, just like on all the recent television series. The little doctor who saw me – for all of five minutes – told me his Mom had had the same symptoms and had a successful ablation that solved everything.  It was very very sweet.

However, there were two problems.  One, that it took all day and I never got to see the actual results, and Two, that the woman next to me all day turned out to be positive for Covid. 

She was a very nice Uzbecki woman – Her husband identified our language as Hebrew and shared their Jewish background with us, and it was good to have a conversation.   But we didn’t do much talking – they were very focused on the post-op infection she had after a lumpectomy, and when they were given the additional news about the covid later in the day didn’t pay much attention to it.

It was very different from hospitals in Israel – the friendly atmosphere, the multicultural staff and patients, the young ages of all the faculty.

There was also something that I thought was unique to hospitals in Israel – a guy lying in the hall.  When my phone died and I couldn’t read on kindle, I watched the couple.  The patient was good-looking and happy to remove his shirt and be examined by the youthful inquisitive doctors, and he and his partner seemed to be having a good time, entertaining all of the other patients behind glass doors..  Because the wall to the hall was glass, it was like watching tv again, and since my phone had died I spent the day watching others. 

In the end the choice to go might have been life-saving, but to me it was another New York experience.  Thank goodness I have good friends to keep me alert.