Debbie and Dov

How we met

My mother passed away after a decades long illness on Erev Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot.

The day that I returned from NJ to Beer Sheva after the funeral and shiva, my back was in bad shape, so I was spending most of my time lying in bed when my cellphone charger stopped working, leaving me feeling rather disconnected from the world.

I managed to post a request on facebook asking for someone in my neighborhood to lend me a charger. Dov and I were facebook friends and live in the same neighborhood, but had neither met face to face nor had any facebook communication.

Dov responded and brought me a charger and we talked a little. Then we met at a cafe and schmoozed for a couple of hours and very soon we found ourselves meeting on a daily basis. The rest, as they say, is history.

So, you might say that my mother, a"h, the cellphone charger and facebook were the shadchanim.

I'm thinking of framing and hanging the cellphone charger.

Grandpa Ralph, Family Humorist

Grandpa Ralph was known in his earlier years for creating grammen and satirical presentations for family occasions.

On one of those occasions, in 1979, he created a "last chapter" for the book, "The Warburgs," by David Farrer (1975) (written about "the other Warburgs"). He entitled his pseudo-chapter "The Uptown Warburgs," and inserted it inside the book, so that it looked as if he were really reading from the book during his performance.

Chapter 22: the Uptown Warburgs

In the late 1930s, a new branch of the Warburg family arrived in the United States. If someone would question a member of this family whether they were related to the Warburg banking family, the glib answer would probably be, "Yes, there is supposed to be only one Warburg family, they are our poor relatives." A member of the Midtown and Wall Street branch of the family, when confronted with this remark, replied somewhat coolly, "No comment." But it seems that relations between the two branches have been cordial, although contact has been sporadic over they years.

The first-born of the Uptown Warburgs, whose original name was Hans, later changed to Joseph H., arrived in the United States first, with lots of clothing, a camera, and little else. One of the Wall Street Warburgs had provided the affidavit required for his immigration to the U.S.

Joseph was to be a pioneer for the family - he established himself and then the rest of the family was to follow. Joseph's younger brother Rudi, who showed independence at an early age and changed his name to Rolf without asking anyone, came to the United States less than a year later and again changed his name to Ralph M. No information is available on what the M stands for.

Ralph moved in with Joseph H. and soon decided to change a few things. First, there was an immediate change in the breakfast menu. Ralph was dissatisfied with tea only and insisted on changing to coffee, although this entailed an additional expense because the purchase of milk now became a necessity at 8 cents per quart. The next thing Ralph objected to was the living quarters because of a lack of light and air. Joseph H. was finally persuaded to move five streets uptown and closer to Central Park West, to a luxurious one-room apartment in a brownstone, with it's own kitchenette.

Ralph excelled at preparing frankfurters and baked beans and made them nearly every day, of which Joseph H. soon tired.

The two brothers showed evidence of their entrepreneurial acumen early on. They teamed up with a friend, and because they were now three solid customers, they managed to convince a hapless restaurateur in the neighborhood to reduce the price of their seven course dinner from 45 cents to 40 cents each.

Joseph H. was now a very eligible bachelor, and played the field extensively. He established two firm guidelines for himself: 1. To date at least two young females at a time, to establish that he was independent and not really serious. 2. To eliminate what Joseph H. called "G.U." - geographically undesirables. Any candidate had to live in Manhttan or The Bronx.

By this strategy, especially adhering to principle #1, Joseph H. continued as an eligible bachelor for quite a few years.

When the brothers' parents arrived, the family moved further uptown to a luxury apartment on Audobon Ave. and 185th St. As the reader may surmise by now, there seemed to be an urge to move farther and farther uptown. This is why the writer chose the term "The Uptown Warburgs" for this family.

Joseph H. was soon informed by the family that he was at an age when he ought to begin to think seriously of estalishing a permanent relationship with someone suitable of the female gender. Thus urged on, Joseph H. produced a lovely young lady of charm, intelligence and the best of upbringings, by the name of Ilse Bravmann. The family immediately took to Ilse and invited her for dinner at the Warburgs.

One episode connected with this dinner has been kept secret within the family for many years. However, a personal interview with one of the dinner paricipants who chose to remain anonymous, elicited the story of a crisis in the Uptown Warburg household.

Ilse charmed everyone with her wit, intelligence and perfect table manners, especially the latter, which always were deemed to be of supreme importance by this family. That is, all through dinner, until a dessert of pudding with strawberries was served. As is customary in the Uptown Warburg home, the invited guest was served first. It seems that all the strawberries had descended to the bottom of the bowl, but this did not deter Ilse. While the family was looking on with deepening anguish and despair, Ilse deftly pushed aside the pudding, with a proper serving spoon, of course, and managed to retrieve most of the strawberries for herself. The informant added, however, that to Ilse's credit, she did leave at least one strawberry for each of the other diners.

The dinner conversation is alleged to have become somewhat strained after this occurrence.

The family council convened the next day to discuss the matter. After a somewhat heated debate, it was decided to bestow the family's approval on Ilse, after all, but a resolution was passed that a different serving order would be followed at future dinners to prevent a recurrence of this near crisis.

In the middle of Joseph H's distinguished career in the United States Army, in November of 1944, Joseph H. and Ilse became husband and wife with the blessings of both the Bravmann and Warburg families.

No information is available about brother Ralph's social activities during those years. All members of the family have consistently declined comment.

However, he did manage to start a hardware manufacturing business shortly after the Bravmann-Warburg wedding. Of course, Ralph started in the style he was accustomed to, in one of the most modern industrial buildings of the decade, on Center Street. It seems that the late model coal-burning stove and the high-speed elevator were especially noteworthy. By the ingenious method of pulling a rope, it was possible to move the "elevator" up three floors in less than an hour.

Ilse ingratiated herself with her brother-in-law by sending a plant in a ceramic camel planter for the grand opening of this major industrial establishment. (This camel is still on display at the brothers' new Englewood plant.) Thereupon, Ralph invited Ilse for a visit to his opulent office. In order to let Ilse inside the office, Ralph had to get up and move his chair out of the way. Ilse was so impressed with all this splendor, that she decided to join the firm as soon as possible, which she eventually did, and has not left her post to this day.

To Ralph's dismay, because of the shortage of office space occasioned by the presence of Ilse, his penchant for hiring a young, single and "interesting" private secretary was squelched.

In 1946, Joseph H. completed his earlier mentioned distinguished career in the military service of the United States. He had probably planned some years earlier what was to follow.

In a typical takeover maneuver, which became commonplace only in the 60s and 70s, he had first conspired to install his wife and probable accomplice in the inner circle of the business. Then he moved in for the kill. Within two weeks, Joseph H. had acquired 50% of the shares of this now allegedly tremendous industrial enterprise which now occupied two whole floors of unknown size.

So much for the business venture of the Uptown Warburgs, except for the fact that Ralph is now vastly outnumbered because Joseph H's oldest son Ronald has entered the firm and is speedily climbing up the corporate ladder.

Joseph H. is reported to have become so prosperous that his main occupation in the firm consists now of engineering a fail-proof burglar alarm system to protect his assets. He is also a reknowned expert on all kinds of electronic gadgets and owns a vast and invaluable collection of calculators, short and long wave transistor radios, and alarms.

Joseph H. has developed a habit of disappearing for long vacations without notifying employees of the firm. This keeps the employees in constant fear of having Joseph H. reappear unexpectedly. A postcard from wherever Joseph and Ilse are vacationing will usually arrive a day or two after Joseph's return, which is of little solace to the firm's workers.

Ilse and Joe have moved even further uptown and north, beyond the confines of New York City, all the way north to Rockland County, where they live in great splendor surrounded by whispering pines and birches.

Ilse became a noted interior decorator and is constantly besieged by friends and acquaintances from far away for advice on their home decoration problems, which advice Ilse graciously despenses.

Joseph H. has become the "Kissinger behind the scenes" for the Jewish community. (note - Kissinger is another landsman from Nuremberg. DW) Joseph H.'s favorite remark is reported to be, "Don't make waves," when he is approached by anxious citizens regarding a crisis in community affars.

Ilse has developed a penchant for giving large and elaborate parties, and, according to local gossip, likes to "invite the whole world." She has a widespread reputation for her culinary capabilites.

This is also true of Ralph's wife Anita, who is the only Yankee in the family. When guests admire her dishes and ask for her recipe, she will invariably respond that they are from the "Moriah Cookbook," of which she is the editor-in-chief. Inevitably, two or three of her guests will purchase the cookbooks. At a price of $6.95 per cookbook, Ralph is often heard to mutter that it hardly paid to invite 20 or 30 or 50 people just to sell a few cookbooks.

Again, little is known about brother Ralph's activities, except that he seems to fancy himself to be the humorist of the Uptown Warburgs. His humor is so appealing, it is reported that every time he gives out with one of his rare puns or "jokes" at the dinner table, his children exclaim in anguish, "Oh, Daddy!"

It seems that he comes up once about every 6 years with one of his supposedy funny productions at some family affair. He claims that he has his audiences glued to their seats on these occasions, but none of the glues have really worked in the past. According to local sources, he has perfected a new kind of quadruple glue that really will hold his audience spell- and seat-bound. He just never gives up.

Since the scope of this book is necessarily limited, the writer will have to dispense with a detailed account of the two new generations of the Uptown Warburgs that have appeared in the 40s. 50s, 60s, and 70s. Although it would be well worthwhile to do so, at this point in time, the writer will leave this to an additional chapter to be added to this book about the Warburgs at a later date.

Just before the editor's deadline approached for this chapter, the writer was advised by reliable sources that Joseph H's and Ilse's children have conspired to hold a huge party in honor of their 35th anniversary at the home of their first-born son and his very lovely wife, Resa. Purportedly, Resa decided to match or surpass her mother-in-law's vast entertainmant endeavors. It is also rumored that Ralph will again be on hand with one of his "hilarious" productions. "The worst is expected," a family member confided glumly.

Since this writer has become so deeply involved with the fame and fortunes of the Warburgs, it semed appropriate to close this chapter by wishing Ilse and Joseph H. a very happy 35th anniversary and many happy and healthy years together with their whole family.

Postscript: The writer was informed that a special, valuable gift will be presented to Ilse for her exclusive use by one of Ralph's offspring. (I think that was me and the gift was a hand-calligraphed Ayshet Chayil - DW)

The Other Warburgs

Over the years, I have often been asked if we're related to the famous Warburgs.

When we were children, we were told that all Warburgs were related. Later on, a member of our Warburg family did some genealogical research and determined that we are not related to them.

In any event, we are connected to them by the fact that members of their family provided the affidavit for a member of our family, Uncle Joe, when he emigrated from Germany in the late 1930's. An affidavit of support is a document an individual signs to accept financial responsibility for another person, usually a relative, who is coming to the United States to live permanently.

Note from cousin Ronnie Warburg:
Your father's uncle claimed that we were related to the famous Warburgs.
However, approximately 10 to 15 years ago, I went to the Jewish Museum and on that evening the famous Warburgs who now hail from Westport, Conn. were present and were signing the newly acclaimed book, The Warburgs, by Ron Chernow. I spoke with some of them, and I didn't get the impression that we were related.
At this point, I accept what cousin Herbert Warburg shows in our family tree- there were 3 Warburg families who took the name from a town called Warburg. None of them are related to each other- Our original name was Hirsch.

Here's Wikipedias' take on "the other Warburgs."

The Warburg family is a prominent American banking family of German Jewish descent, noted for their varied accomplishments in biochemistry, botany, political activism, economics, investment banking, law, physics, classical music, art history, pharmacology, physiology, finance, private equity and philanthropy.

They originated as the Venetian Jewish del Banco family, one of the wealthiest Venetian families in the early 16th century. Following restrictions imposed on banking and the Jewish community, they fled to Bologna, and thence to Warburg, in Germany, in the 16th century, after which they took their name.

The family re-established itself in Altona, near Hamburg in the 17th century, and it was there that M. M. Warburg & Co. was established in 1798, among the oldest still existing investment banks in the world. Other banks created by members of the family include: M.M.Warburg & Co., Warburg Pincus, S. G. Warburg & Co. (becoming UBS Warburg).

Noteworthy members

Felix M. Warburg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Felix Moritz Warburg (14 January 1871 – 20 September 1937) was a German-born American banker. He was a member of the Warburg banking family of Hamburg, Germany.
Warburg was an important leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, established to help the Jews in Europe in the period leading up to, and especially during, the Great Depression. Warburg actively raised funds in the United States on behalf of European Jews who faced hunger following World War I. As early as 1919, he was quoted in the New York Times discussing the dire situation of Jewish war sufferers.
As a result of his philanthropic activities, a new Jewish village established in Mandate Palestine in 1939, Kfar Warburg, was named after him. He was a trustee of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

The Felix M. Warburg House, in New York's Upper East side was donated by his widow and today houses the Jewish Museum.
By Gryffindorderivative work: Fpo (talk) - Felix_Warburg_Mansion_006.JPGFelix_Warburg_Mansion_007.JPG, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10490753

American Museum of Natural History - The Felix M. Warburg Hall of New York State Environment focuses on the village of Pine Plains and Stissing Mountain in New York’s Dutchess County, an area that includes mountains, natural lakes, forests, rock formations, and both wild and cultivated land. The hall’s exhibits highlight the changes in the landscape since Precambrian times, its seasonal and natural cycles, and its plant and animal life.
Cutaway views of the mountain and terrain, along with fossils, mineral specimens, and topographical maps, illustrate the geologic history of the area. Another series of exhibits describes the role of agriculture on the local ecology, with displays about crop rotation, the management of an apple orchard, natural fertilizers in the soil, and the cycles of nutrition and decay. Dioramas also showcase forest and wetland ecosystems.
An exhibit about life in the soil depicts animals living below ground in a farmer’s lawn and at the edge of woodland, with views of tunnels, nests, and burrows used by moles, chipmunks, mice, yellowjackets, Japanese beetle larvae, ants, and earthworms.
Hall Location


Paul Warburg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Moritz Warburg (August 10, 1868 – January 24, 1932) was a Jewish German-born American banker, and an early advocate of the U.S. Federal Reserve System.
The cartoon character, Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks in the Little Orphan Annie series, was purportedly inspired by Warburg's life and times.

Otto Heinrich Warburg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Otto Heinrich Warburg (/ˈvɑːrbʊərɡ/; 8 October 1883 – 1 August 1970), son of physicist Emil Warburg, was a German physiologist, medical doctor and Nobel laureate. He served as an officer in the elite Uhlan (cavalry regiment) during the First World War, and was awarded the Iron Cross (1st Class) for bravery. Warburg is considered one of the 20th century's leading biochemists. He was the sole recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1931. In total, he was nominated for the award 47 times over the course of his career.
Cancer hypothesis (Warburg hypothesis)
Warburg hypothesized that cancer growth is caused by tumor cells generating energy (as e.g. adenosine triphosphate / ATP) mainly by anaerobic breakdown of glucose (known as fermentation, or anaerobic respiration). This is in contrast to healthy cells, which mainly generate energy from oxidative breakdown of pyruvate. Pyruvate is an end product of glycolysis, and is oxidized within the mitochondria. Hence, and according to Warburg, cancer should be interpreted as a mitochondrial dysfunction.
"Cancer, above all other diseases, has countless secondary causes. But, even for cancer, there is only one prime cause. Summarized in a few words, the prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar."
— Otto H. Warburg
Warburg continued to develop the hypothesis experimentally, and gave several prominent lectures outlining the theory and the data.
Today, mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes are thought to be responsible for malignant transformation, and the metabolic changes are considered to be a result of these mutations rather than a cause.
Survival under the Nazis
When the Nazis came to power, people of Jewish descent were forced from their professional positions. However, the Nazis were hypocritical in their implementation of this policy, looking the other way in some cases where they could use Jewish scientists to advance the technology of the Reich. Despite having a Jewish father, Warburg was spared. By this time Warburg was studying cancer. Although banned from teaching, he was allowed to carry on his research.
In 1935, Hitler had a polyp removed from his vocal cords. It is believed that afterwards, he feared that could develop cancer, which may have allowed Warburg to survive. In 1941, Warburg lost his post briefly when he made critical remarks about the regime, but a few weeks later a personal order from Hitler's Chancellery ordered him to resume work on his cancer research. Göring also arranged for him to be classified as one-quarter Jewish.
According to the Reichsbürgergesetz from 1935 (cf. Nuremberg Laws) Warburg was considered by the Nazis a half-Jew (Halbjude) resp. Mischling and in September 1942 he issued an official request for equal status ("Gleichstellung") with Germans which was granted.
It is believed that Warburg was so totally dedicated to his work that he was prepared not only to stay in Germany but also to accept the Nazi treatment of his Jewish colleagues and his Jewish relatives. This was despite him having received an offer from the Rockefeller Foundation to continue to fund his work if he emigrated. After the end of the Second World War he made inquires about moving to the United States of America, but his approach was turned down.
In 1943 Warburg relocated his laboratory to the village of Liebenburg on the outskirts of Berlin to avoid ongoing air attacks.

Otto Warburg (botanist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Not to be confused with Otto Heinrich Warburg, a distant cousin, Nobel Prize Laureate, namesake of the Warburg effect.

Otto Warburg (20 July 1859 – 10 January 1938), was a German botanist. He was also a notable industrial agriculture expert, as well as an active member of the Zionist Organization (ZO). From 1911–21, he served as the president of the ZO, which among other things, sought 'for the Jewish people a publicly and legally assured home in Palestine."

Other notable members of the Warburg family:

Moses Marcus Warburg (1763–1830), founder, with his brother Gerson Warburg (1765–1825), of M. M. Warburg & Co. in 1798.
Sara Warburg (1805–1884) married to Abraham Samuel Warburg (1798–1856), her cousin[9]
Rosa Warburg (1833–1908), married to Paul Schiff, director of the Creditanstalt of Vienna
Siegmund Warburg (1835–1889), married to Théophilie Rosenberg
Abraham Samuel Warburg (1864–1933)
Georg Gabriel Warburg (1871–1923)
Siegmund George Warburg (1902–1982), founder of S. G. Warburg & Co, London
Moritz M. Warburg (1838–1910), married to Charlotte Oppenheim
Abraham M. Warburg (1866–1929), German art historian
Max M. Warburg (1867–1946), banker
Eric M. Warburg (1900–1990), founder of Warburg Pincus, married to Dorothea Thorsch
Max Warburg
Marie Warburg, married to Michael Naumann (1941–), journalist
Paul M. Warburg (1868–1932), father of the Federal Reserve, married Nina Loeb (1863–1912) in 1895, the daughter of Solomon Loeb
James Warburg (1897–1969), economist, banker, advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, married to Kay Swift (1897–1993)
Andrea Swift Warburg, married to Sidney Kaufman
Katharine Kaufman Weber (1955–), novelist, married to Nicholas Fox Weber.
Katharine Warburg (1870–1935), married to Isaac Dorfman (1868–1929), philanthropist, banker.
Felix M. Warburg (1871–1937), New York banker with Kuhn, Loeb & Co., philanthropist, married Frieda Schiff (1876–1958), daughter of Jacob H. Schiff, in 1895.
Gerald Felix Warburg, well-known cellist and conductor, married Natica Nast (1905–1987), daughter of Condé Nast
Edward Warburg (1908–1992), philanthropist and benefactor of the arts.
David M. Warburg, lawyer, partner at Seyfarth Shaw.[10]
Ian Warburg, married to Jane Green (1968–) author, philanthropist.
Olga Warburg (1872–1895)
Fritz M. Warburg (1879–1962) living in Stockholm during World War I and II, father of Eva Warburg who organized Kindertransport to Sweden in 1938 and -39.
Louisa Warburg (1879–1973), married to Julius Derenberg (1873–1928)
Walter Julius Derenberg (1903–1975), legal scholar

Grammen

Grammen are ditties sung to a particular tune, usually on Purim. Here's a random example that I found on youtube.





In our family, grammen are also sung at family celebrations, such as Bar Mitzvahs, and may be set to many different tunes. Are they still really grammen sans the holiday and tune? I don't really know, but that's what we called them.

Grandpa Ralph used to be the official composer of the lyrics, but I have been in charge for a while now.

This one is engraved in my memory. At the time that I performed it along with Lennie and Karen, we were 10, 6, and 4 years old.

Written by Grandpa Ralph, we sang it at cousin David Warburg's Bar Mitzva in 1966 to the tune of "Erev Shel Shoshanim."

Debbie:
I am Debra Sue
I'm known to most of you
At Ronnie's Bar Mitzva there was only me
Now we are three

Lennie:
Lennie Mark is my name
I have one claim to fame
On Ronnie's Bar Mitzva I was born
Early on that Shabbos morn

Karen:
I am Karen Ann
I'm the youngest of the clan
I'm four years old and a mazik I am told
A mazik I am told

Refrain:
We're happy to be here
to wish David good cheer
Mazal tov and bracha
to the whole mishpacha

All:
David was a model child
but some mothers though him wild
when he came strolling down the street
all the mothers yelled, "Retreat!"

There were some other verses about David, the Bar Mitzva boy, but I can't remember them, except that one ended with the notable phrase:
"and stuffed one up his nose."

This is actually cousin Ronnie's Bar Mitzvah (please note that it confirms my verse in the song - of the three siblings in my family,there was only me!), but I haven't any picture from David's.

Would you repeat that, please?

Hearing loss runs in our family on both sides, so it didn't come as a surprise when, around the time I turned 50, my children started complaining about my not responding to their attempts to verbally attract my attention. Hearing tests showed some loss, but not enough to have me considered eligible for a hearing aid. Then, at age 55, after repeated testing, I did qualify.

Although I was willing to do whatever was necessary to improve my hearing, I was happy to find that I needed the smallest kind of hearing aid that fits inside my ear and is not noticeable unless you are looking for it, pictured on the far right in the above image.

I have equal hearing loss in both ears, so I now wear 2 hearing aids.

It's nice to be able to participate in conversations without straining to hear or playing a guessing game - I usually hear vowels sounds but not consonants without the hearing aids, and sometimes I had to fill in the blanks.

At times, the guessing game could be amusing, but it was more likely to be frustrating. I would hear something like, "Please don't make it snow!" in the middle of the summer, and think, "OK, what sounds sort of like that, but makes sense?" It turned out that my workmate was saying, "I think it's time to go!"

The hearing aids only help in certain situations. If I am in a quiet room with one person who is speaking sufficently loudly and enunciating their words, I can often hear them without the hearing aids. On the other hand, it does help with mumblers, a lot of whom seem to attend my afterschool art classes for children. If there is a lot of noise in the background, everything is amplified, and the hearing aids don't help me single out the speech parts of the general noise.

The first time I wore the hearing aids, I was on a bus, going home from the hearing aid lab. I was surprised to be able to very clearly eavesdrop on a conversation going on at the opposite end of the bus. I also heard the bus' mechanical noises very clearly.

My hearing aids are digital and can and have been adjusted to accommodate these issues somewhat, but, so far, background noise is still a problam. I may need some more adjustments.

I enjoy hearing the birds tweet nice and loudly, but hearing myself swallow and brush my hair, not so much.

My hearing aids are subsidized by my Kupat Cholim, but I was told that had I been of retirement age when I got them, I would have paid even less, about half of what I paid. Now, I understand why it makes sense to give pensioners a discount, but from my point of view, it felt like I was being punished for having lost my hearing at a younger age.

If you live in the Jerusalem area and need hearing aids, I highly recommend Ozen Kashevet and their technician, Leonid. He is both a mensch and good at his job.

Ozen Kashevet
6 Ben Maimon Blvd.
Jerusalem 92261
Israel
+972 2-566-6640

Thank you, Dr. Heimlich! (1920-2016)

or
The time that Yishai choked

When Yishai was about 18 months old, I laid him down on the changing table one day to change his diaper, and heard a click in his throat. His eyes went wide with fear. I realized that he knew that he was in trouble, and that there was something stuck in his throat.

I followed what I had learned about the Heimlich Maneuver for toddlers as well as I could remember, holding him vertically with his head down and his feet up (he should have been more on a slant), and gave him a whack on the back. A 10 agora coin came flying out.

I then sat and trembled for what seemed like a long time, but probably wasn't.

Thank God, Yishai was fine.

So, thank you Dr. Heimlich for the invaluable lifesaving technique that you gave to the world!

My big fat botched gall bladder surgery

or
The three times that I could have died

If you've read my previous posts to this blog, especially Remembering Simcha and Tzvi and Yaakov's Journey, you may be thinking, "C'mon, another medical debacle? How many things like this can happen to the same family?" Well, I assure you that they did and I have the scars to prove it. It's one of those examples of truth being stranger than fiction.

And I think that with this post, barring unforeseen circumstances, I'll have covered the subject of family medical dramas.



The first time that I could have died (1976) occurred about a year after my preemie twins were born and died (see post Remembering Simcha and Tzvi).

I went to the emergency room on Shabbat Shuva with severe abdominal pain, and was diagnosed with a urinary tract infecion and sent home with antibiotics.

Then, on Erev Sukkot, while at work, I again experienced severe pain and an ambulance was called to take me to the emergency room. By the time the ambulance arrived, I experienced temporary blindness - I could hear what was going on around me, but my visual field was completely black. It lasted at least a couple of hours, or until I was under general anaesthesia, and was extremely frightening.

I have never been given a satisfactory explanation for the loss of vision by a medical professional, but this is my lay self-diagnosis:

Conversion Disorder
Wikipedia
Conversion disorder begins with some stressor, trauma, or psychological distress. Usually the physical symptoms of the syndrome affect the senses or movement. Common symptoms include blindness, partial or total paralysis, inability to speak, deafness, numbness, difficulty swallowing, incontinence, balance problems, seizures, tremors, and difficulty walking.


The surgeons opened me up not knowing what they were going to find, but it turned out that I had an ectopic prenancy, with the fetus growing in a fallopian tube, which had to be excised, as continuing growth of a fetus outside of the uterus can kill the mother.

Thankfully, when I awakened from the surgery, my vision was totally restored.

A short while later, a friend told me that his sister-in-law had experienced the same symptoms on Erev Pesach. Not wanting to worry anyone, and intent on finishing her Pesach cleaning, she told no one of her pain and was found dead on the floor.

The second time that I could have died is described below.

The third time occurred about 3 years ago (2013), when my blood glucose level climbed to 565.

The doctor at the emergency care center told me that most patients with such a high glucose level come in to them in a coma. If I had fallen into a coma, it might not have been discovered for quite a while, as I was alone at the time.



The second time I could have died (1996)

After weeks of intense pain, I was diagnosed with an inflamed gall bladder and gall stones.

I was the stereotypical gall bladder patient: female, forty, fat, and fecund.

I underwent laparoscopic gall bladder surgery at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center, and when I woke up from the surgery, everything seemed fine at first. I felt as good as I expected to a few hours postsurgery. However, when the nurses checked the drainage tubes in my abdomen, they became concerned. Apparently, bile was filling one of the tubes, and it wasn't supposed to.

The surgery had taken place in the morning, and mid-afternoon, the surgeons breezed into the room and asked the half-dozen or so visitors in the room, who were there for the patient in the bed next to me, to please leave, because they had something important to talk about to the Walks. They then proceeded to tell us that there had been a complication in the surgery and that I would have to have an additional surgery done, this time conventional (roux en y hepatic jejunostomy). An expert on the procedure that was to be done was being flown in and the surgery would take place at midnight. It was rather dramatic...

What they didn't tell me was that what they referred to as a complication was actually a surgical error. They had mistakenly cut the wrong duct.

While laparoscopic surgery has a fairly short recovery time, usually about a week, this surgery took me about a year to recover from, and I'm not sure I ever got back to the energy level I had had before the surgery. I was left with a Y-shaped scar impressive enough that if I ever have imaging done of my abdomen, it elicits quite a reaction in the imaging technician.

I've been asked if I considered suing the surgeons. I did, briefly, but eventually decided not to take any action in that direction.

Let me explain why with the help of an excerpt from the book, "Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science," by surgeon and author Atul Gawande.

"Today we've learned to take out gallbladders with a miniature camera and instruments that we manipulate through tiny incisions. The operation, often done as day surgery, is known as laparoscopic cholecystectomy, or "lap chole." Half a million Americans a year now have their gallbladders removed this way...

Removing the gallbladder is fairly straightforward. You sever it from its stalk and from its blood supply, and pull the rubbery sac out of the abdomen through the incision near the belly button...There's one looming danger, though: the stalk of the gallbladder is a branch off the liver's only conduit for sending bile to the intestines for the digestion of fats. And if you accidentaly injure this main bile duct, the bile backs up and starts to destroy the liver. Between 10 to 20 percent of the paients to whom this happens will die. And the survivors often have permanent liver damage and can go on to require liver transplantation. According to a textbook, "Injuries to the main bile duct are nearly always the result of misadventure during operation and are therefore a serious reproach to the surgical profession." It is a true surgical error, and, like any surgical team doing a lap chole, we were intent on avoiding this mistake...

Using a dissecting instrument, I carefully stripped off the fibrous white tissue and yellow fat overlying and concealing the gallbladder. Now we could see its broad neck and the short stretch where it narrowed down to a duct, a tube no thicker than a daisy stem peeking out from the surrounding tissue, but magnified on the screen to the size of major plumbing. Then, just to be absolutely sure that we were looking at the gallbladder duct and not the main bile duct, I stripped away some more of the surrounding tissue. The attending and I stopped at this point, as we always do, and discussed the anatomy. The neck of the gall bladder led straight into the tube we were eyeing. So it had to be the right duct. We had exposed a good length of it without a sign of the main bile duct. Everything looked perfect, we agreed. "Go for it," the attending said...

I got the jaws around the duct and was about to fire when my eye caught, on the screen, a little globule of fat lying on top of the duct. That wasn't necessarily unusual, but somehow it didn't look right. With the tip of a clip applier, I tried to flick it aside, but instead of a little globule, a whole layer of thin unseen tissue came up, and underneath, we saw that the duct had a fork in it. My heart dropped. If not for that little extra fastidiousness, I would have clipped off the main bile duct.

Here was the paradox of error in medicine. With meticulous and assiduous efforts to ensure that they have correctly identified the anatomy, surgeons need never cut the main bile duct. It is the paradigm of an avoidable error. At the same time, studies show that even highly experienced surgeons inflict this terrible injury about once in every two humdred lap choles. To put it another way, I may have averted disaster this time, but a statistician would say that, no matter how hard I tried, I was almost certain to make this error at least once in the course of my career..."


Human beings make mistakes. I don't believe that surgeons should be punished for being human. Perhaps if I had suffered serious injuries, I would feel differently.

Interesting side note:
This was one of two instances in our family in which family members experienced medical issues that seem related to the person after whom they were named.

My paternal grandmother, after whom I am named, died from complications of gall bladder surgery.

My father-in-law, after whom Yaakov is named, died from a complication of diabetes, namely an abscess that was located next to the same cranial nerve that housed my son Yaakov's tumor, and he had some similar symptoms: hoarse voice and a partially closed eyelid.

I have no idea what to make of this.