{"id":1616,"date":"2013-10-16T11:18:07","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T15:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ezermizionusa.org\/blog\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2014-05-09T10:17:42","modified_gmt":"2014-05-09T14:17:42","slug":"ill-pay-you-back-i-promise-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/ill-pay-you-back-i-promise-2\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ll Pay You Back, I Promise!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to be normal. Just a regular guy with a wife and kids. Helping out with the sho\"prpping, a family trip to the park to play ball—these were everyday events, hardly a blip on my radar screen. Then everything changed. At the age of 34, I discovered I had M.S.\u00a0 Like a thief in the night, the M.S. stole my happiness. I went from a healthy adult who can walk on his own feet to a cripple in a wheelchair.\u00a0 A cripple who cannot do anything for himself.<\/p>\n

Every act, even the simplest, became a complex challenge. It is not easy to be a young, disabled person. The challenge is tremendous and is with you day after day, moment after moment. For me, the hardest thing was to hear my two little boys asking me, \u201cAbba, please play soccer with us,\u201d \u201cAbba, come with us to the park.\u201d How many times pre-M.S.\u00a0 did I refuse because I just wasn\u2019t in the mood, because I wanted to read the newspaper instead. Now I cry for those missed opportunities. I would give anything to toss a ball over to my sons and hear their gleeful shout as it landed right in their mitt. What I wouldn\u2019t give just to walk down to the corner with them for an ice cream cone. I see their sad, disappointed faces. It hurts. A lot. I can\u2019t walk and\u00a0 I know I\u2019ll never do those things again.<\/p>\n

I feel like I am living in a black hole. There is one glimmer of light that helps me \u2013 Ezer Mizion.
\nEzer Mizion is my \u201clegs.\u201d Thanks to Ezer Mizion\u2019s ambulance services, I can get to the treatments I have to undergo at Hadassah or Shaarei Zedek Hospital. Without them, I would not receive the medical care I need when I need it. And, once in awhile, they even have a slot for a \u2018dream trip\u2019.
\nBeyond the practical help, they support me and encourage me a great deal. \"prThey make me feel that I am still a respectable human being. They treat me with the utmost dignity. Respect and dignity—that\u2019s their trademark. \u00a0Every day, I tell them \u2018thank you\u2019 a million times. They deserve a giant pat on the back. each day that I am driven by one of the Ezer Mizion staff members, I whisper inside myself, \u201cOne day I\u2019ll pay you back, I promise!\u201d
\nSoon, I am hoping to receive a specialized vehicle that I can drive with my hands alone.it will open doors for me and enable me to do so much more. But most important, it will allow me to give.\u00a0 \u00a0I hope to be able to pay back Ezer Mizion, at least to some small extent, and serve as a volunteer driver for other patients who need transport. I , too, will treat everyone with dignity and respect. I will be an Ezer Mizion driver in every sense.\u00a0\u00a0 In this way, I will be able to pass on a bit of Ezer Mizion\u2019s good\u00a0 to others.<\/p>\n

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I used to be normal. Just a regular guy with a wife and kids. Helping out with the shopping, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[94,140,1],"tags":[33,142,149,147,148,31],"class_list":["post-1616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ambulance-2","category-ambulance-tributes","category-ezer-mizion","tag-disability","tag-disableld","tag-mobilkity","tag-ms","tag-multiple-sclerosis","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2332,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/2332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}