January 27, 2012
Is it surprising - with the wasps' nest that is our government, that violence is becoming our way of life? I cannot help but connect it together on all levels - from the harassment in the prime minister's office to the babies shaken to death by their parents. All levels of life seem to me to interact, to interrelate, and like in Shakespeare's times, to be connected by a great chain of being. January 28, 2012 Are there any Syrians left? By my count there are enough dead to populate Tel Aviv. How can this go on every day without universal condemnation? How are there not demonstrations in universities everywhere? somehow I don't understand our values. I know I criticize Israel all the time, but that's because I live here and am therefore responsible for every flaw. But proportionately I've living in HEAVEN.
January 29, 2012 Ezi's father Bandi had a friend named Naf, who was a bachelor in the wild city of Tel Aviv, with women all over town. One morning he came over looking all scruffy and worn out, and Bandi looked at him and winked, suggesting the wild nights he must be having. "No, no!" He shouted, "It's not the f---ing - It's the running!" I keep this story at the front of my mind to keep my sense of humor when I follow Ezi trying to get the authorizations to get treatment for his lymphoma. All right, it's been difficult diagnosing - almost a year and a quarter before it could be said with authority that his lymphoma is probably indolent and could be helped by a treatment of Zevalin and Maphtera. But once the protocol was clear we thought it would be simple - just do it. Okay, they wanted to get some stem cells first. So the authorizations took a while and the nurse wasn't around, and all that. But now that the hematologist waved the papers at us and told us to get them set up with the insurance because the next shipment of radioactive material from France would be on the 23 and he had to have the biological material a week before, we thought it would be easy. But No. Our GP had to authorize the M and Z, and she is overworked, so it took her a few days to see the request, and a few more days to respond, and when Ezi picked it up today and took it to the health clinic offices they noted that she had only asked for Z and not for M. So we have to start all over with asking the GP who isn't there today for the M paper, take it over to the clinic. Then, hopefully, there will still be time to get it approved through the hc board, take that approval back to the doctor, who will then issue the hc approval for hospitalization, take all that to the hospital and begin ordering the medicine and arranging the dates for treatment. Having assumed it would work out, I canceled the book launch on the 28th because Ezi wouldn't be well enough yet from the treatment, but now I see he will not be in treatment yet, even if we really use every connection we can find to get this in place.
January 30,2012 I retract everything I said yesterday. When I understood that only one of the medications cost 90,000 shekel well over $25,000, i was suddenly embarrassed about the stink I'd made here. Anyway I have a backache that won't go away so I'm going to the orthopedist for some of the good stuff he gives for pain, so I am too dependent on the health clinic to complain about it... January 31, 2012