Today was a busy day. After breakfast, David and I headed north to Beer Sheva. The reason was that David's depression has been steadily worsening, and it had reached a critical, life-threatening point. After a good trip (including a refreshing stop to see the animals at 101KM in the Arava), we arrived at the Soroka Hospital there, ate lunch, and headed for the emergency room. Of course, we had to wait quite a while, but the psychiatrist who saw David was good and sympathetic. She agreed to write a letter so that he could be admitted to the psychiatric hospital in Beer Sheva. So, we took the letter and headed over there. The admitting doctor there was really great and very thorough. This made the intake process rather long but it GREATLY increased my confidence that they will actually do the right things to help David.
I left there a little before 9:00 p.m. with David in bed. Naturally, he was VERY tired after the long day. I had a pleasant drive home, and arrived here just after 11:30.
I must add a few vignettes here. Visiting a hospital in Israel is ALWAYS an interesting experience! In the area around Beer Sheva live many Bedouins, so one always sees lots of them in town, and the hospital is certainly no exception. So my first little story is about the cute young Bedouin who was sitting near me and asked me, in Hebrew, if everything was okay. When I told him "yes", his answer was "Baruch HaShem"!
As we were sitting there waiting, I saw a nurse go up to a very obviously African young man, who name was apparently Adam, and ask if he spoke Hebrew. He didn't, and he also didn't speak English. But he DID speak Arabic!
In another scene I observed, a male nurse was speaking Hebrew with a very Russian (and, I might add, queeny!) accent -- to a Muslim woman (I knew from her headdress)!
The intake psychiatrist at the psych hospital was apologetic about his English, but he actually spoke it better than most of my students. Later, I heard him speaking in Russian on the phone. Of course, he was fluent in speaking as well as typing Hebrew (he did a LOT of the latter!).
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