After my one class yesterday (Wednesday, 10:30-12:00), I took David over to the Maccabi nurses because of his severe depression. The nurse got the doctor to write a letter sending him to the ER at the Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva. So after lunch, we headed for there.
Of course there was LOTS of waiting, as there always is in a busy ER. They discovered that the sodium level in his blood was VERY low (even lower than his usual, which is already below the normal range), so they admitted him to an internal medicine ward instead of the psychiatric hospital. All of this took so long, though, that I didn't leave Be'er Sheva until nearly 4:00 a.m.!
About halfway through the drive back, the "check engine" light came on in the car, smack in the middle of the desert. I could see, though, that the engine was NOT overheating. In fact, it was running so cool that the heater wasn't working very well. So I continued home without incident, arriving here just after 6:30. Of course, I headed to bed as fast as I could. But I also had to get up to take the car into the mechanic well before my first class, which was at 2:30. They checked it but found nothing wrong. They told me to come back if it happens again, and they charged me nothing.
When I tried to call David in the morning, the hospital would NOT let me talk with him because their phone is not supposed to be used for such things. I was quite frustrated about that, naturally, since David did NOT have his cell phone with him (we had thought he would be in the pysch hospital, where a phone might easily get stolen, so we had left it at home).
After my 2:30 class finished (at 4:00), I tried to call him again, hoping to at least have them give him a message. Instead, they told me that he had been released! To the police! They refused to give me any more details, not even the telephone number of the police. I immediately wrote to Berlitz to cancel my 5:00 class so that I could find David.
I found a number on the internet for the Be'er Sheva police, but it just rang and rang until it finally quit and hung up. After many calls to the emergency police number (100) and several other numbers, I was unable to find out anything about him, so, quite frantic, I headed down to the local police station to file a missing person report. The policewoman there was VERY nice and took the situation very seriously. After some calling around, she eventually found out that David was, in fact, still hospitalized in the same ward at Soroka (or maybe re-hospitalized there?).
I came back home and called again, and this time I was able to talk to David. He seemed okay, but I think there's a bit more to the story that I'll be able to find out from him tomorrow when I go up there to visit him and we go for a walk away from the ward. Hmmm.....
In any case, between the extreme lack of sleep last night, and the anxiety about David today, I'm pretty worn out. At least I was able to do virtually ALL of the police calls etc. in Hebrew and to communicate successfully enough to get done what needed to be done. My Hebrew isn't very correct or fluent sometimes, but I'm finally able to manage, even in fairly difficult situation!
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