{"id":4934,"date":"2019-04-17T11:52:56","date_gmt":"2019-04-17T15:52:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/?p=4934"},"modified":"2019-05-13T10:04:26","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T14:04:26","slug":"and-bring-a-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/and-bring-a-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"And Bring A Friend\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"helping-hands<\/a>
The perfect genetic match<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cPlease come into my office and\u2026and bring a friend.\u201d That was my doctor on the line with the results of the blood work. We had just had a baby and I, the father, felt so weak. With our first, I helped out a lot. With #2, I felt too weak to even hold the baby. Something seemed very wrong. And now I was about to find out what. \u201cBring a friend,\u201d she had said. It sounded ominous.\u00a0 And so there we sat, my friend and I, when, with tears in her eyes, my doctor said those words: You have leukemia<\/strong>. <\/em><\/p>\n

How do I tell my wife? With a newborn at home. How do I tell my mother? My brother had recently battled a brain tumor\u2026and lost. Now again?! Well, I was released from the hospital and went home, arriving very close to Shabbat. I felt that I couldn\u2019t ruin my wife\u2019s Shabbat so I kept quiet. After Shabbat, I told her. My wife and I cried together but we were determined.\u00a0 We just had to find a way to move forward. We were not going to collapse. We were not going to give up. We\u2019d fight. We\u2019d do our part and G-d would do His.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t easy. That very Sunday was my sister\u2019s wedding. I simply couldn\u2019t ruin the wedding for my sister, for my mother who was finally seemed happy after my brother\u2019s death. So I told everyone that I had hurt my back. The truth was that I simply had no energy, the leukemia<\/strong> coursing through my body, sapping me of all my strength. On the last day of the week of wedding celebrations, I told my mother the news. It was so hard for her to accept. But a lifetime of faith in G-d came to fore as she internalized and helped me to internalize, \u201cWe are all in the hands of G-d\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the hospital, I missed my family terribly. One day my daughter came to visit me. But when she started coughing, she had to leave for fear that I would catch her cold.<\/p>\n

I have to tell you, my wife is truly amazing. She gave me the best gift – a poster with pictures of my children. I just burst into tears at the sight of that simple but powerful gift.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the hospital began swabbing my siblings for the bone marrow transplant<\/strong>. Two of my sisters were good matches but one had just given birth and the other was expecting.<\/p>\n

\"pr<\/a>Then Ezer Mizion came into my life with a perfect match!!! It was incredible how fast Ezer Mizion worked. I received the round of chemo to completely destroy my immune system in preparation for the transplant. Some people lose their minds from this mega-dose of chemo. I decided to keep my focus by studying Talmud .<\/p>\n

The day of my transplant, I woke up to find my room decorated with signs wishing me a happy birthday. My wife! Sure, it was an extremely scary day for us all, but it was also a day of celebration \u2013 I was getting my life back, being born again, my family was getting our lives back. What a powerful moment.<\/p>\n

The transplant<\/strong> was a success and a month later I was released from the hospital, having finished the section of the Talmud I had chosen just 2 days before.<\/p>\n

When I met my donor, he shared with me that the same month he donated his bone marrow<\/strong>, that very same month, his wife conceived. He gave a life and he got a life.<\/p>\n

I want to thank him and Ezer Mizion’s Bone Marrow Registry<\/strong> who facilitated my transplant<\/strong> for not only saving my life, but for saving my entire family.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cPlease come into my office and\u2026and bring a friend.\u201d That was my doctor on the line with the results of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,1],"tags":[10,741,756,37,11],"class_list":["post-4934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bone-marrow-registry","category-ezer-mizion","tag-bone-marrow","tag-bone-marrow-registry","tag-bone-marrow-transplant","tag-leukemia","tag-transplant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4934","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=4934"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4954,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4934\/revisions\/4954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ezermizion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}