Tag Archives: health

The Return of the Panic Attacks

Posted on May 11, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            I thought I was done with panic attacks. It’s not that I was free of anxiety or depression, but for a long time now I’ve felt like I could handle the difficult things that came up without shattering into a million pieces or becoming paralyzed, but something changed in the past few weeks. I’m pretty sure it started when I tried a new Rheumatological medication (Methotrexate), which was meant to lessen my overall body pain and allow me to exercise more, but instead made me even more exhausted and exacerbated my pre-existing depression and anxiety.

At first, I had no idea where the extra depression was coming from: was it from thinking about adopting a new dog? From watching the news? The exhaustion of doctor visits? Discovering that weight loss medication would remain out of reach? I don’t remember now what finally made me believe that it was the Methotrexate that was sending me into the deep dark, but after weeks of worsening depression I decided to stop taking it and see if things improved, and, gradually, I started to feel better and able to think and write and plan and hope again.

            When I called the Rheumatologist to tell her what was going on, she said to wait a few weeks before trying the next medication, which shouldn’t have any of those side effects, and since I wanted to believe her and finally see some improvement in the overall body pain that has seriously restricted my life, I agreed.

            But since I’d been taking the Methotrexate weekly, instead of daily, the timeline for it to leave my system was very slow, and in the meantime, I had my first panic attack: a small one, at Whole Foods. I used to have food panic all the time, because of the thousands of different diets I’ve been on, and because of old conflicts around keeping kosher, but after years of working on Intuitive Eating a lot of that noise had calmed down. Except, at Whole Foods (a ridiculously high priced store that rarely has the things I need, but always has fun stuff I want), I got all mishkebobbled by the prices and the choices and I had no idea what to buy. Eventually, I chose a few small things and got out of there as quickly as possible. It was only a small echo of my old panic attacks though, and I was mostly okay.

            The second panic attack, also small, also happened around food, this time at the enormous supermarket near my house. I blamed it on Passover, because there was a large section of Passover foods that made me feel like I should buy jars of borscht and boxes of cake mix and cans of chocolate chip macaroons that I would never eat. But, again, the panic passed quickly, and when the effects of the Methotrexate finally wore off I thought I was stable enough to try the second rheumatological medication.

            And then the car battery died. This had happened once before, because one of the lights above the driver’s seat goes on accidentally at times and if I don’t notice it right away, and don’t drive the car for a few days, by the time I get back to the car the battery is dead.

            This time it happened when I needed to take Mom for a medical procedure, an endoscopic ultrasound of her heart (called a TEE), but the car wouldn’t start and there was no one around to help, and instead of being able to problem solve, or even think, I panicked. Mom told me that she would call a cab, and then call AAA or the maintenance men at our co-op to help me charge the battery, and the idea that I would have to interact with strangers scared me so much that I left my mother and my pocketbook in the car and race-walked back to the apartment to curl up on my bed and hide.

            Mom called me from the parking lot a few minutes later to say that the cab was on its way, and that the maintenance men would be able to help with the car in about half an hour, but in the meantime I should come back outside and get my pocketbook, because it wouldn’t be safe to leave it in the car. She didn’t seem to be upset with me, or to understand that I was curled up on my bed in an altered state, but I couldn’t think for myself so I did as I was told and went out to the car for my pocketbook. I was able to give Mom a hug just as the cab arrived, and then I walked back up to the apartment, resumed my curled up position, and cowered in my room.

            There was a knock at the door a while later and I jumped out of bed and put on my jacket and answered the door on automatic pilot; some part of me was able to function enough to make chit chat and ignore the bad jokes about my lack of car knowledge. When the guys said I should drive the car around for ten or fifteen minutes before turning it off (and then on again), I did as I was told, even though my pocketbook, with my driver’s license, was still upstairs.

To fill the time, I decided to do a practice drive to the hospital where Mom was having her test done, to make sure I’d know where to pick her up later, and I got stuck in traffic for forty minutes, worrying the whole time that the car would stop suddenly or that I’d get into an accident and have no identification on me. But I made it home safely and turned off the car and waited a few minutes, as I’d been told, and then turned the car back on, successfully (which meant I wouldn’t have to call the maintenance guys again, which was good because I didn’t have their phone numbers). While I was still in the car, taking my first deep breath in more than an hour, Mom called from the hospital to ask if the car was working, because they’d been delaying her procedure until she could assure them that I would be able to pick her up when it was over, and I spoke to the nurse on the phone and reassured her that I would be there on time.

            I survived the rest of the afternoon on automatic pilot and picked Mom up from the hospital and got her home safely. I felt awful for having had a panic attack when she needed me, and really scared that this would be my new normal, but most of all I was exhausted and needed sleep. When I woke up from my nap a few hours later I started to wonder if there might be a connection between starting the second rheumatological medication the night before and this latest, much more significant, panic attack. But my brain was telling me that I was always this useless, and I couldn’t come up with a convincing argument to fight back.

Two days later, Mom and I went to a dog rescue event, because my therapist had suggested (insisted) that I go, and because the depression was getting so dark again that I didn’t have the energy to think for myself. We got the address of the rescue event wrong, twice, but finally found it by following the crowd of cars. Once we’d parked and walked over to the row of tents and tables advertising all of the different rescue organizations, I was overwhelmed by all of the noise and people and dogs, and I couldn’t make sense of what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go.

We eventually found an enclosure filled with many small and hypoallergenic dogs, along with some full-sized Poodles and Golden Retrievers and a horse-sized Siberian Husky. But none of the volunteers seemed to know how their adoption process worked, or which dogs were still available for adoption, and no one knew about age and weight and health status, except that all of the dogs were probably around three years old and had been rescued from dog meat festivals in Asia (that’s hard to type, let alone to say out loud).

There was a little black poodle mix who was already on one of the rescue’s leashes outside of the enclosure, but when I asked about him a very possessive older woman glared at me and said she was considering adopting him, which seemed to mean he was off limits. Then we saw a little butter-colored dog who looked like the perfect size for us, but another woman had picked him up and held him tight while she looked for a volunteer to help her with the adoption; when she finally found the volunteer-in-the-know it turned out that that dog was already spoken for by someone else. I was getting more and more overwhelmed by the confusion and heat of the day and part of me wanted to leave (or escape), but part of me felt like it was my job to stay there and tough it out.

Finally, one of the volunteers asked me if I’d like to meet one of the dogs and I looked around and saw a little white dog who looked very much like Butterfly, and I chose her. I held her for a while and she was very calm, to the point where she didn’t even make eye contact or react to much of anything. When I put her down on the ground though, she freaked out at a noise I couldn’t hear and almost strangled herself trying to get out of her leash. The volunteer put her back into the enclosure with the other dogs and she sat down against the fencing, near where I was standing, and seemed to calm down again. She wasn’t the dog I was looking for, especially because she looked so much like Butterfly and was triggering all of the old grief and responsibility, rather than the love, but I couldn’t untangle my feelings or get myself to leave her behind in the chaos either. Mom finally found someone who could explain the adoption process, including the $2,000 adoption fee, which is basically what it would cost to buy a puppy from a breeder, and by then the Butterfly look-alike was sitting patiently on a little girl’s lap, so we took a brochure and finally walked away.

The whole time we’d been near the enclosure I’d been beyond thinking, unable to figure out what I wanted to do or what I thought I should do, except that I knew I should adopt all of the dogs, including the big dogs, because what kind of monster leaves a dog behind just because of money or because the world is tilting, or for any other clearly not-good-enough reason. As we got further away from the dogs I started to be able to hear my own thoughts a little more clearly, but I still felt sick and dizzy and angry and confused. I was able to drive home safely, but hopelessness and the long list of things that were wrong with me was rushing through my mind and refused to shut up.

Hours later, on Mom’s prompting, I looked up the side effects for the second rheumatological medication, and depression and anxiety were at the top of the list, despite the doctor’s assurances that this medication would not be a problem, so I emptied the rest of the pills from my pre-filled weekly pill box and crossed my fingers.

            It took a couple of days for the worst of the hopelessness to wane, but in a way the damage had already been done. I’d forgotten how bad things could get, and now it was right in the front of my mind. It didn’t help that the day after the rescue event Mom got the results of her TEE and told me that she would probably need surgery to repair or replace her mitral valve (her fourth surgery in three years).

I’m frustrated that these medication trials, which were supposed to help me function better, sent me so close to the brink; and I’m frustrated that this is how it’s been with so many medications over the years; and I’m angry that the one medication that was helping (Ozempic) was taken away; and I’m angry that the doctors still have no name for what’s wrong with my health, let alone any solutions.

            But at least I can think again.

I called the Rheumatologist to tell her that I wouldn’t be trying the third medication on her list, at least not right now, because I needed to be in the best frame of mind possible to help Mom through her surgery, and the expected three months of recovery.

Only time will tell if the panic attacks were solely caused by the rheumatological medications, or if, with enough stress, they will return. I’m trying to be hopeful that I’ll be able to handle everything that comes my way this summer, but part of me is worried, remembering how bad it can get. Another part of me, though, is remembering Cricket’s insistent strength, and Ellie’s insistent belief in me and my strength, and holding those memories as close as possible, to inspire me and help me through.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

90 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Vacations Are Weird

Posted on February 24, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            I had this past week off, like most teachers in the United States, for Presidents’ week, and I really needed the break. But one week of vacation was just long enough to remind me of all of the things I wanted to get done, and not long enough to actually do them. Especially since the first thing on my to-do list really took over.

            My to do list: SLEEP; put the new rugs down; think through all of the requirements for our next dog(s), and look for rescue organizations that will let us adopt without a fenced in yard; finish three novels and start two more, though one or more may end up being a memoir instead of fiction; read through my ten boxes of Therapy Pages notebooks and plan how to use them; start exercising again (for the fiftieth time); clean the kitchen and get back to cooking (instead of microwaving); read all of the books on my bedside table and piled haphazardly on my shelves; buy more bookcases; finish translating another ten Israeli pop songs and try not to add more to the list right away; work on lesson plans for the rest of the school year; get a haircut (or find a good excuse for why I shouldn’t have to ever cut my hair again); read through my hundred-page-plus draft of an “essay” on the history of the modern state of Israel, and see how many more books I will need to read before I can convince myself that I’m in over my head; watch every webinar I’ve downloaded from YouTube, on writing and therapy and music and Israel and whatever else; oh, and don’t fall into a deep depression as a result of the isolation and loneliness, if possible.

            One nice thing happened before the actual vacation started which gave me hope: we had another birdie visitor. This time it was a young white-throated sparrow who either had ADD or a panic disorder and kept flying and pacing relentlessly around the apartment. Mom got some great pictures of him in the few moments when he was able to remain still.

            But then, right after the bird left, I heard from my pharmacy that the FDA is clamping down on off label prescriptions for Ozempic (anything other than a type-two diabetes diagnosis), and then my doctor told me that my insurance won’t cover any of the other weight loss medications (Wegovy, etc.), so if I wanted to keep taking weight loss medication it would cost at least $1,000 per month. So, after six months of slow weight loss, the experiment is suddenly over. There’s a bill in the US congress to try to get weight loss medications covered by health insurance, but who knows how long it will take to get it approved; relying on the smooth workings of the United States government has never been a good life strategy.

            If the weight I’d already lost had improved my overall health, then maybe I would feel better about stopping here, but, if anything, I’m more exhausted now than I was six months ago. Which is why the first thing on my to-do list overwhelmed everything else I wanted to accomplish this week, and most of my vacation was spent sleeping, or at the very least, lying down. I also watched a bunch of webinars (and managed to download even more), and got some reading and writing and typing done. But vacation is almost over and my to-do list is, if anything, longer than it was at the beginning of the week. How is that even possible?

            Here’s hoping that the rest I’ve been able to get this week will help me get through until the next short vacation, and that somewhere along the way some more birdies will come along to remind me that all of this is worth the effort – even if my to-do list never, ever, gets done.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

76 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Mom’s Surgery

Posted on January 13, 2024 by rachelmankowitz

            As expected, I spent the weeks leading up to Mom’s second hip replacement living in existential dread, afraid she would die on the table and I would be left alone in the world with no one to fight off the gardeners trying to cut down my paw paw tree. And then, as everyone around me seemed to know it would be, the surgery was successful and Mom came through with all of her humor and energy intact.

            The days leading up to the surgery were full of worry, both because of the pre-surgical clearances coming down to the wire, but also because Mom’s hip was deteriorating incredibly quickly and she was struggling just to get from one room to the other, especially after the ban on NSAIDS was put in place five days before the surgery.

            I filled the time preparing: filling the freezer and the pantry with prepared meals; organizing all of the random crap in the apartment that might get in her way when she came home with the walker; carrying boxes of books to the thrift store, and bags and cans of dog food to the animal shelter; and finally replacing the old crooked bookcase with a new, slightly crooked bookcase (put together by moi – which explains why its wonky), so that she wouldn’t be toppled by falling books and sent back to the hospital.

New bookcase, before the wonky drawers were put in.

            We still have new rugs waiting to be put down, after we removed the un-cleanable rugs from the last months of Cricket and Ellie’s lives, but I’m going to wait on that until Mom’s walking is steadier and she doesn’t need the walker anymore; hopefully the neighbors will be patient with the uncovered floors for a bit longer.

            The need to clean has been profound since losing Ellie. When both dogs were still here I didn’t mind a few extra boxes here and there, but in the quiet I keep wanting to clean and find order and make things neat, as if making the apartment more orderly will heal the grief (though it doesn’t really work).

My Ellie

            It was so strange to be in the apartment alone. For two days it was just me, no Mom, no dogs, and I don’t know how to describe the stillness in the air. I kept hearing noises and thinking Ellie was coming back down the hallway after a midnight snack, or Mom was getting up in the middle of the night for a midnight snack (Mom and the dogs seemed to have a club I was not invited to). But no one was actually there.

Thank God, the surgery itself went well, and now that Mom’s back home, everything feels like its back to normal, where the noises around the apartment are real instead of phantoms, and even on pain meds and using a walker, she’s more energetic and busy than I am, always texting with someone or planning something. I think the lesson here is that I am a very boring person on my own.

            Next up is physical therapy and occupational therapy and nurse’s visits and keeping track of all of the post-op medications and worrying about something else going wrong. But Mom is in a surprisingly good mood so far, and I’m feeling hopeful again.

            Oh, and we got a note from the board of our co-op saying that from now on there won’t be a pet fee charged each month for each (or any) pet you own, so when the time comes I can clearly get as many dogs as I can fit into the apartment. Five sounds like a good number to me. It’s possible that Mom will disagree, so, shh, don’t tell her.

“One dog is always enough.”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

131 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Ellie’s Tenth Birthday

Posted on December 2, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

            A week after seeing the substitute vet, and being told not to spend more money on tests, we were able to get an appointment with Ellie’s regular vet and he recommended an ultrasound, to see if her distended belly was filled with fluid or with something else; and he confirmed that it was all fluid. He recommended against trying to poke around with needles to empty the fluid, because it could stress her literally to death, and because the fluid would come back in a few days anyway. Instead, he raised her diuretic dose a little bit and sent us home, saying that, like with Cricket, if Ellie doesn’t eat for three or four days, she’s suffering.

            It certainly wasn’t the news we wanted to hear, but it is what we expected, and it was a relief to know for sure what we were dealing with.

            The raised dose of the diuretic helped a little bit, at least enough to allow Ellie to feel hungrier and to enjoy her food again. She especially liked the Chinese food we got for my birthday dinner. Her belly is still full of fluid, and she spends most of her time resting on her side, but her joy in eating is wonderful to see.

“Where are you hiding the Chinese food?”

            When we were looking through her papers recently (which makes it sound like she has her own filing cabinet and a small business to run, but we were just looking for her exact birthday so we could celebrate it with her), we realized that she is turning ten this year, not nine like I thought. There’s a little bit of relief in knowing she’s made it all the way to ten, just like there was relief in seeing Cricket pass the sixteen year mark, but it’s still not enough.

            We didn’t plan anything special for her birthday, because every day she’s still with us feels special and important, and really an act of will on her part. Just seeing her eat, and take all of her medication, and enjoy getting her back scratched, feels like a celebration to me. I’m so grateful that she wants to stay with us for as long as she can, and I’m especially grateful that we’ve been able to have this time with her, after Cricket’s death, to shower her with as much love and attention as she can absorb, so that she knows what it’s like to be the center of everything, at least for a little while. Even Cricket would have wanted that for Ellie, though not as much as she wanted it all for herself.

            Now we’re just going day by day, trying to accept that we won’t have that much more time with her. Her sweet spirit still shines through, even when she’s tired, or worried, or struggling to catch her breath, and we know how lucky we’ve been to have her this long.

            Happy birthday dear sweet Miss Ellie, my beautiful girl!

“I need more chicken, Mommy.”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

97 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

The Ozempic Shortage

Posted on November 11, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

            I spent more than two years working on Intuitive Eating being superconscious of hunger and fullness levels and fighting with myself to stick to smaller portions, but after three months of gradually raising the dose of Ozempic, I realized that, beyond weight loss, Ozempic has made Intuitive Eating much easier. Now I can eat half of my breakfast and put the rest aside for later, without thinking about it or arguing with myself. Is this what normal people feel like around food? Because I still enjoy eating, and I still have cravings for this or that, but it’s just not overwhelming anymore.

“Chicken!”

            So, of course, as soon as I was fully on board with Ozempic, and ready to go up to the optimal dose of 2 mg a week, I found out that I wasn’t immune to the Ozempic shortage.

            The pharmacy had had no trouble getting the lower doses, so as I got used to a faint sense of nausea and more sensitivity to acidic foods, there was no stress around getting the weekly .25 mg, .5mg, and 1 mg doses. But it turned out that I should have become aware of the shortage when my doctor moved me up to 1 mg a week, because my pharmacy didn’t fill that prescription. Except I didn’t notice, because I still had three boxes of the lower dose pens, so I just took two .5 mg shots to make up the 1 mg dose, assuming that’s what I was supposed to do. So when the doctor raised my dose to the full 2 mg, and told me that there might be difficulty getting it, I was surprised to hear it. She told me that if the pharmacy couldn’t get the higher dose I should just stay at 1 mg. I didn’t hear anything from my pharmacy after the 2 mg dose had been called in, so when I went in to pick up a few other refills I asked for the 2 mg prescription of Ozempic and the kid at the counter sent me over to the pharmacist for the bad news. Not only couldn’t they get the 2 mg dose, they couldn’t get the 1 mg dose, and couldn’t give me the available smaller doses to make up the higher dose (I guess it’s an insurance thing). He said they would let me know if a supply of either the 1 mg or 2 mg dose came in, but he had no idea when, or if, it would.

            I called the doctor’s office to let her know about the problem and to ask if there was another medication she could switch me to, and the secretary, who’d heard it all before, said no, just call around to different pharmacies until you find one with a supply of Ozempic, and then call us back and we’ll send a new prescription.

            I still had 1.5 mg left at home, so I made plans to make it last two weeks, taking .75 mg each week, and crossing my fingers that the pharmacy would come through by then; because I didn’t want to have to call a million pharmacies, and then call the doctor’s office each time someone said they might have an extra dose for me; but also because I couldn’t quite believe that it was an emergency. I couldn’t believe that my doctor would have started me on Ozempic if there was a real, even reliable, chance that I wouldn’t be able to keep taking it after the first few months. That just seemed crazy.

When I told my nutritionist, and my therapist, and Mom, that my plan was just to wait, they said absolutely not. You must be more proactive! You must keep calling and running around to get this medication that is actually helping you! But I couldn’t do it. I felt like a black hole was opening up under my feet at even the thought of chasing down Ozempic doses across Long Island. I couldn’t even put into words why it felt so awful, but I’m pretty sure I made sad puppy dog eyes, just like Ellie, because Mom volunteered to call around for me. She found a big pharmacy a few towns away that was expecting to get a shipment after the weekend. All I had to do, they said, was call my doctor for the prescription on Monday morning and it would all be fine.

So on Monday morning I called my doctor’s office and the secretary said that the doctor would call in the prescription. I called the pharmacy every few hours to see if they had filled the prescription, but each time the automated operator said they didn’t have my name and number in their system yet and I should call back later. After eight PM, when I’d given up, Mom called one more time and got the notification that my prescription had been filled and a four week supply of the 2 mg dose of Ozempic would be waiting for me in the morning. I was so relieved, and so exhausted just thinking about having to go through this again in a month.

            I was still up at one thirty in the morning, anxious and preoccupied about Ellie’s health and the war in Israel and Gaza, and trying to read a mystery to distract myself. I’d finished yet another chapter and decided to check my email for a break, and that’s when I found the notification from the new pharmacy saying they had run out of Ozempic and couldn’t predict when they would get the next shipment in.

“Oy.”

            I don’t know exactly what happened. Maybe there was enough Ozempic at eight o’clock, when they put it into the computer, but by the time the pharmacy had closed an hour later it was all gone. Or maybe someone stole a box of Ozempic out of the back door after midnight. But it was starting to seem like Ozempic was being doled out on a first-come-first-serve basis, or some sort of Hunger-Games-style competition with no rules at all.

            I’m not good at fighting for what I need, or racing to get places faster than someone else. Even the thought of competing for scarce resources exhausts me down to the bones. I’ve spent so many years trying to manage my weight, and spending enormous amounts of money and time on diets and nutritionists and programs and apps and on and on. And I’ve spent so many years being criticized by doctors for not being at the right weight, and for not trying hard enough, and finally there’s a medication that actually seems to be helping me, but I struggle with the idea that I should get something when someone else needs or wants it too. I don’t believe that I should be the first on anyone’s list to get Ozempic when people with type two diabetes, the original patients the drug was made for, are struggling to get their medication. I can’t make an argument for why I should get what I want in a way that convinces me, let alone anyone else.

            For days, this huge, raw, unhealed wound full of self-loathing and hopelessness opened up and practically swallowed me whole, and I just wanted to cover it with duct tape and wait for the Ozempic shortage to end on its own. But, gradually, the weight of it started to recede, just enough for me to be able to hear Mom say that someone at our regular pharmacy had suggested calling independent pharmacies in the area, instead of the big name ones.

I dragged myself over to the computer and googled independent pharmacies near me. I made a list of about ten places, including the one down the block that had been closed for a long time but was supposed to reopen under new management any day. But making the list was the most I could manage at that point, especially at ten o’clock at night, and I planned to start calling another day, when I’d built up another dose of hope.

The next day we had to take Ellie for another echocardiogram to see how she was doing on her meds. They raised the dose of one of her medications and said to bring her back in four months, which felt more hopeful than at our last vet visit; and then I had to go teach, and as I was leaving Mom said, do you want me to make those calls for you?

Of course I do, Mommy!!!!!

By the time I got home from teaching, all I needed to do was send a picture of my insurance card to the just-re-opened pharmacy down the block and they said they would have a four week supply of the 1 mg dose of Ozempic ready for me the next day. I wasn’t sure I believed it, though. I had to wait until the phone call came the next morning and we drove over and became the first customers to pick up a prescription from the newly opened family run pharmacy (all three staff members standing behind the desk smiling at me).

I have no idea what will happen in four weeks when I need a refill, and I have no idea if I will ever be able to go up to the 2 mg dose, and I don’t know what lesson to learn from this. Have faith in humanity? Support local small businesses? Trust that even deeply felt, unbearable hopelessness will eventually pass? Let Mommy handle everything?

I don’t really understand why a small pharmacy was able to get the 1 mg dose of Ozempic when my big chain store couldn’t get it; and I don’t understand why the second big chain store was able to get the un-gettable 2 mg dose, or where it went between the time they told me they’d filled my prescription and the time they told me they couldn’t.

But I do understand why Ozempic is so popular with so many people, in a world where even an extra five pounds is counted against a person’s character, and doctors believe that extra weight is the cause of all disease, even when it’s not.

I wish I didn’t need to take this medication. I wish my body could self-regulate to the perfect weight without any intervention. I wish I didn’t need any medication at all: for pain, for depression, for a faulty thyroid, for high blood pressure, or for my weight. But I do. And I’m afraid this whole thing is going to happen again, and again, and I don’t know that I will be any more prepared to manage the waves of emotion next time. But for now, I have my medication, and Ellie has her medication, and we both have my Mom nearby for support when we get overwhelmed.

As for anything else, we’ll just have to take it day by day, because thinking ahead is too freakin’ hard right now.

“It’s nap time, Mommy.”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

74 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Ellie’s Heart

Posted on October 28, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

            In the midst of Cricket’s terminal illness, we were also dealing with very bad news about Ellie’s heart: it was two times the size it should have been, and surrounded by fluid that shouldn’t be there. She would need to take four new medications, twice a day, and we’d need to find a diet for her that was both low in sodium and tasty enough to get her to take all of her meds. But it just didn’t seem possible to me that Ellie could be so sick, not while Cricket was busy dying.

Sisters forever

            A week before Cricket’s death, we took Ellie back to the vet, because she had been coughing more than usual and we wanted to make sure we were doing everything possible to keep her with us. A new x-ray showed that her heart was still twice the normal size, and that there was still some fluid around it, so the vet raised the dose of her diuretic and told us to come back in two weeks for a blood test. The coughing stopped for a few days, but after Cricket’s death Ellie had more of the fainting attacks that had sent us to the vet in the first place, months earlier, losing control over her legs and flopping down on her chest.

In the car on the way to the vet for the follow up blood test, Ellie was even more nervous and agitated than usual, and we wondered if she was thinking of Cricket, and how Cricket hadn’t come home from her last trip to the vet. Standing in the same examination room where Cricket had taken her last breath, the vet took Ellie’s blood and suggested another echo sometime soon, to see if issues had progressed into her lungs. I had a whole list, at home, of questions I’d planned to ask and medication refill requests, but I couldn’t remember any of it. Eventually, because she was giving me her sad puppy eyes, I remembered to tell the vet that Ellie had become a very picky eater recently, wanting only the special foods (chicken treats, greenies, chicken liver, fresh cooked chicken) instead of the well-rounded, low-sodium diet we were trying to give her. And the vet turned back from the computer screen, where he’d been updating her chart, and said “treat her like a make-a-wish kid, and give her anything she wants.”

“Anything?”

            I didn’t curse at him, out loud. I just stood there, forgetting to ask for the refills or anything else. He recommended a brand of healthy treats from the pet supply store next door that might help Ellie eat her good-for-her food, and then we paid our latest bill and went next door for the treats and then went home, to Ellie’s great relief.

The new treats went over well enough, though Ellie now believes she should be hand fed each meal. And then, within a few days of her vet visit we noticed blood spots on her wee wee pad and I freaked out. We had to follow her around with a ladle to get a pee sample, but in a few days we found out that she had a urinary tract infection, which was much better than the ten other imaginary diagnoses that were spinning around in my head. The vet put her on anti-biotics, which made her even more exhausted at first, but eventually started to make her feel better.

In the middle of worrying about Ellie, and grieving over Cricket, we had a moment of joy. Out of nowhere one night, despite still refusing to eat her regular food, Ellie begged for some of Mom’s dinner, a piece of red pepper, a few pieces of broccoli, and then pumpkin bread, all foods that Ellie generally ignored, but Cricket had always loved. Maybe she was just craving something different because of her illness, but it seemed to us like she was channeling her sister and bringing her back to us for a moment.

            Ellie still looks for her sister around every corner, almost as if she expects Cricket to pull a “Gotcha” on her at any moment, and I look for Cricket too, imagining that she’s just sleeping and that’s why the apartment is so quiet. I’m still in the numb phase of grief, unable to take it in for more than a few minutes at a time. And, in the midst of that grief, I just can’t think of Ellie as having only another six months to a year, which is what the vet predicted when he first told us about her heart, months ago now. I like to tell myself that the vet never expected Cricket to live as long, or as well, as she did, so what does he know? Except, Ellie isn’t Cricket. Ellie had to use up a lot of her spirit surviving her first four and a half years as a breeding mama, and I can’t expect her to fight for more time the way Cricket did. Instead, I want God, or the universe, or veterinary medicine to intervene and give her the extra years she deserves; and I’m pissed off, beyond words, that that probably won’t happen.

            But for now, we still have Ellie with us, and she’s recovering from her UTI and getting some bounce back in her step, and asking for cuddles and treats and looking askance at our continued attempts to feed her the “healthy” food.

“Pot roast? Chicken?”

            It’s cruel that my sweet, loving, almost nine-year-old Ellie is going to die too soon, from an oversized heart, of all things. Butterfly, Cricket’s first rescue sister, had the same heart issues (along with a few others, caused mainly by her eight years as a breeding dog at a puppy mill), and the same sweetness as Ellie, and she lived to almost thirteen years of age despite all of it. But the vet says Ellie’s heart disease is more serious and more advanced and there’s nothing we can do, other than what we are already doing. I know he means well and wants us to be prepared, but right now the thing I want most in the world is for the doctor to be wrong.

“Doctors are always wrong. It’s a rule.”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

150 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

If I Had the Energy

Posted on September 16, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

            If I had the energy, I would go back to Ikea for more bookcases, to line the walls of my room, and the living room, and maybe the hallway and the dining room too, and then I’d fill them all with books.

            If I had the energy, I would go back to school to become a rabbi, or a cantor, or at least a Jewish studies professor.

            If I had the energy I would go for long walks in different places every day, sniffing the smells and breathing the air and listening to all of the sounds, like Cricket and Ellie like to do.

“Walkies?!”

            If I had the energy I would finish writing the novels I’ve started, no matter how many revisions it takes or how much time I’d have to spend fighting my internal demons, and I would keep reminding myself that writing the book is the important thing, even if no one ever reads it.

            If I had the energy I would live on a farm, with horses and sheep and alpacas and one of every kind of dog in the world!

“Other dogs?!”

            If I had the energy, I would go back to ice skating and tennis and learn how to just love what I can do and not always compare my abilities to the people who do these things at the highest levels.

            If I had the energy I would make dinner every night, learning new and complicated recipes for meals that I would love to eat.

            If I had the energy I would travel across Israel, and then across the United States, and then across Europe and then Asia, learning new things and eating new foods and meeting new people.

            If I had the energy, I would go back to school for a PsyD, and train with people I admire, and become a child psychologist so I could help the kids I don’t know how to help now.

            If I had the energy I would write memoirs and mysteries and musicals; I would write down everything I know and every question I have, and then I would read and study and ask and interview until all of my questions were answered, and then I’d start all over again with new questions.

            If I had the energy I would practice guitar and piano every day, and then learn how to play the violin, and the drums.

“That would be loud.”

            If I had the energy I would do the gardening and the landscaping at the co-op so that no one would ever cut one more branch off of one more pawpaw tree.

            But to be fair, if I had all of that energy, I would be overwhelmed, with too much to do and no idea how to decide which of my priorities should go first, and not enough time or money to do it all anyway. Because there are so many versions of me in my imagination, and they all keep competing for what little time and energy and focus I actually have. And even now, when the amount of energy I have in any given day has dwindled down to something incredibly small, I still can’t focus enough to fill that time well and accomplish the things that should be possible, because I spend so much time arguing with myself, unable to stick to one version of me, even for a day, even for an hour.

            So maybe it’s okay that I don’t have the energy to do everything my imagination can come up with, because that would be too much to fit into any one life. And most likely, if I had more energy, I would have an even longer, more unreasonable list of things to do, and the same feeling of failure to live with.

            Maybe the goal is to accept the amount of energy I have today, and hope for more for tomorrow, and be kinder to myself about the limits, to my energy and my focus and my decision making skills,…but I should definitely get over to Ikea to get those bookcases one of these days.

“Bookcases are where you store chicken treats, right?”

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

96 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Ellie’s Belated Return to the Groomer

Posted on September 2, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

After months of worrying symptoms and doctor visits and medication, Ellie’s heart failure has stabilized enough so that we finally felt safe taking her to the groomer to deal with her very overgrown mop of hair. It was also Ellie’s first visit to the groomer alone since she’s been with us (four years!), because Cricket doesn’t need much grooming and I didn’t think she would be up to the stress of it anyway.

“I’m perfect just as I am.”

            As we were leaving the apartment, I made sure to give Cricket a Greenie (a green dog treat, shaped like a toothbrush, with questionable teeth cleaning capabilities) to keep her occupied while Ellie had her leash put on, and immediately, Ellie snapped her teeth on the Greenie, already in Cricket’s mouth! They stood there fighting silently over that Greenie with all of their might, and somehow Cricket managed to hold on to it until I could convince Ellie to let go and follow me to the front door.

And I was sort of in shock.

Ellie, my calm, loving, usually submissive sweetie pie, had actually tried to steal food from her grumpy, stubborn, aged sister’s mouth?!

“Who, me?”

            I was laughing out loud as I led Ellie outside, thrilled both that Ellie’s appetite was back in full force, and that Cricket still had the strength to fight for what was hers.

            Once outside, Ellie ran gleefully to the car, seemingly forgetting that she’d missed out on a treat, possibly because she’d finally remembered that she’d had a full breakfast just moments earlier.

            On the drive to the groomer, Mom sat in the backseat with Ellie to keep her company and defuse her car anxiety and the weirdness of not having Cricket there with her. When we dropped Ellie off at the groomer, I started to feel more anxious about leaving her there, out of my sight, for hours. She still coughs every once in a while, even though her medications seem to be managing most of her heart failure symptoms. But I tried to be positive and focused on driving Mom to her Neurologist’s office, where she would hopefully find some relief for the pain in her legs and feet, if not a cure for the numbness that has prevented her from driving lately. And then, while sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, I was preoccupied with worrying about Mom, and worrying about leaving Cricket alone at home for so long, and then worrying about fifteen or twenty other things swirling in my mind, and there wasn’t much room to worry about Ellie, who, at the very least, was not alone.

After the doctor’s appointment we had to stop off at CVS to pick up prescriptions, and to drop off one for Ellie (because one of her medications is only available at the human pharmacy), and then we went to the market that always has chicken livers, unlike our regular supermarket, because when Cricket is refusing to eat anything else she will still eat chicken livers. She’s often not hungry in the morning, but that’s when we need to give her the doggy Xanax to help her calm down enough to receive her subcutaneous fluids to manage her kidney disease. Chicken livers, and cinnamon buns, oddly, seem to be our most reliable treats when the wet dog food isn’t tempting enough.

And then we were back at the groomer to pick up Ellie, who was now less than half the dog she’d been a few hours earlier, and thrilled to be going home.

            Cricket was standing at the door waiting for us when we returned home, and she thoroughly examined her shorn sister, to see what fresh hell she’d been through, but more importantly, to find out if she’d had any secret treats (she had, her groomer loves to give her treats!).

            And then the dogs banded together to beg Grandma for even more treats, eventually running out of steam and deciding to start their favorite afternoon activity, sleep tourism, wherein they proceed to take naps in as many different places throughout the apartment as possible. And then I was able to relax too, knowing we’d all made it through another challenging day. Together.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

66 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Cricket and the Wee Wee Pad Path

Posted on August 19, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

A couple of weeks ago, when Cricket lost the ability to hold off peeing until she could reach the wee wee pad by the front door, we created a yellow brick road of wee wee pads, from Grandma’s bed to the front door, to help her out. And, either as a result of the Gabapentin and ACE she takes every day (in order to tolerate the subcutaneous fluids for kidney disease), or because of incipient dementia, Cricket has started to pace around the apartment at all hours, peeing along her wee wee pad path, especially in the middle of the night.

            After she’s jumped off Grandma’s bed, to get a drink of water and to pee, Cricket will come to my room, sometime around four o’clock in the morning, and bark at me for the mommy-elevator up onto my bed, where she wanders around and around in search of the perfect sleeping spot, which is often elusive. For some reason, Ellie has decided that instead of staying in my room at night, the way she used to, she prefers the wee wee pads – at least the as yet unused ones – as her favorite place to sleep.

“Are you telling my secrets, Mommy?”

When I accept the inevitable and finally get up, around 7 AM, Cricket and Ellie are ready to go outside, walking down the stairs together if Cricket is up to it. Neither one of them can run and play the way they used to, but Ellie gets a lot of enjoyment just by standing still and listening to the sounds of the neighborhood, while her sister wanders around the yard sniffing all the smells.

When we get back inside it’s time for Ellie’s medication, carefully stuffed into small pieces of chicken or chicken liver, with a few pieces going to Cricket as well. And, if she’s willing, Cricket gets her ACE and Gabapentin in her food too, so we can get her fluids done early and give her time to pee it all out during the day, instead of needing to walk her path so much overnight.

“Give me more fluids and I’ll be swimming down the hallway!”

We’re still in the trial and error phase with all of this, constantly adapting their diets and schedules and adapting our expectations of what they can and can’t do, based on how things are going each day. Ellie is mostly consistent, though she needs new high value treats every few days to help her tolerate all of her pills. Cricket is the wild card. Some days she seems like she could go at any moment, and other days she seems so normal that we almost get complacent. Almost.

We’ve started to get rid of rugs that have been peed on too often, by both of them, and we’re doing a lot of extra laundry, but we love them, so we walk the wee wee pad path, replacing one pad here and there as we go along, trying to keep them happy and comfortable. I wouldn’t have chosen this, but I wouldn’t want to miss a day of having them in my life either, so this is what love looks like right now.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

80 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Ellie’s Cough

Posted on July 29, 2023 by rachelmankowitz

            A few weeks ago, maybe after the apocalyptic day in New York, when the skies turned orange and everything smelled of smoke because of the Canadian wildfires, Ellie started to cough.

“Are you talking about me?”

            It’s not that she’d never coughed before. In fact, she has a full menu of interesting coughs and sneezes to her name: including the how-dare-you-pull-on-my-leash cough, which sounds like a frog is jumping out of her throat; and the excuse-me-where’s-my-dinner cough, which is more like a whisper, with her head turned away for deniability. But this cough was something new. It sounded like she was choking on something, or suffocating, and then she’d sort of cough up whatever it was and collapse as if she’d run a marathon.

            The first time I witnessed this, I was afraid she was going to die right in front of me. I may have taken it more seriously as a result of the debarking surgery that was done when she was still a breeding dog, because the scar tissue from that surgery has made her throat more constricted than it should be.

            It was a few days before I witnessed another coughing attack, and I was shocked by it again, especially by the way she seemed almost paralyzed for a couple of minutes afterward, but then she was fine, and I was relieved. She started to cough more frequently after that, but with less seriousness, and I wondered if maybe it was just an allergy, exacerbated by the air quality, and, really, I was distracted. Cricket had been diagnosed with kidney disease and needed fluids every day, and we’d had a car accident and had to buy a new car, and I’d had to go to five or ten doctors’ appointments, and prep for my second oral surgery (the follow-up to last year’s surgery), and that’s only the top line of the chaos that was going on around here, and there was no way to keep up with all of it, so each time Ellie stopped coughing and seemed to be breathing and walking and eating okay, I just breathed a sigh of relief and let it go.

            But last week, when Cricket had to go back to the vet for a follow up blood test, and I was between medical appointments, it seemed like a good opportunity to bring Ellie in to be seen as well.

            Of course, as soon as we made the appointment for both of them, Cricket, who had been doing surprisingly well, had a downturn. She couldn’t eat and she was woozy, even without the calming meds, to the point where she allowed me to insert the needle for the fluids without a fight. We all went to bed that night thinking this was the end, and we’d have to leave Ellie home the next day, and bring Cricket in to the vet for the last time.

            But in the morning, my little phoenix rose from the ashes again, climbed up and down the stairs herself, ate her breakfast and demanded more.

“I’m hungry!!!!!”

            So we went, all together, to the vet, me as the chauffeur in the front seat, Mom sitting in the back with both dogs, so that Ellie wouldn’t have to sit alone back there (Cricket has never tolerated sitting in the backseat. When we would put her in a harness early on in her life, she’d escape within thirty seconds and make her way up to the driver’s seat). With Cricket and Grandma sitting next to her, Ellie got through the ride without crying once, though she was still breathing heavily.

            I carried Cricket into the vet’s waiting room, not wanting to have her walk on the hot ground (Ellie refused to be carried), and the vet took Cricket out first, to take the blood, and then focused on Ellie and her cough. I tried to reenact the cough for him, so he’d know what he was dealing with, and he gave me a look and said, “Can you do that again?” It took me a second to realize he was joking. If he has a sense of humor it is very, very dry. He checked Ellie’s heart and looked in her mouth and took her temperature (which she found horrifying), and he gave her an anti-inflammatory shot and sent us home with antibiotics and a cough suppressant for her to take twice a day, and he said to call him in a few days and let him know if she was coughing any less (because if not, he’d want to follow up with an x-ray).

            And we were free. This visit, which, for a few hours there had seemed like it would be the last time I ever saw my Cricket, turned out to be routine and quick. When we got home we were all ready for an afternoon nap, maybe me more than everyone else, to be honest.

“Oy.”

            Both dogs were thrilled with their treats (with their separate meds hidden inside) once the naps were over: Cricket discovered a great love for sardine juice, and Ellie discovered that she had no such great love and stuck with pieces of chicken.

            Ellie coughed less for a few days, though she became more and more picky every day about the treats within which we could hide her pills, but then the coughing came back, and Ellie was barely eating anything at all. We called the vet and he said to stop the antibiotics, because they might be causing her lack of appetite, but keep up the cough suppressants for a few more days and then call back.

Pretty quickly, though, it was clear that Ellie was getting worse. She was breathing heavily, leaving treats uneaten (where Cricket could easily steal them), and refusing to walk more than a few feet at a time. So we called the vet for an emergency appointment this morning and brought her in, and as soon as he saw her he said she didn’t look good at all. He took an x-ray and said her heart was huge and misshapen, and there was fluid collecting around her heart. He gave her a shot of a diuretic and told us he would send the x-rays on to a specialist and then let us know what medication she could take going forward. But, he said, she could collapse at any time. He couldn’t explain how she’d gone from having a little bit of a cough to being in heart failure within a week, but most likely the cough had been caused by the enlarged heart in the first place, pressing on her trachea.

Ellie’s home now, still breathing heavily, but peeing rivers, which will hopefully relieve some of the pressure on her heart. But my heart is overwhelmed. Cricket is oblivious: sleeping on Grandma’s lap, eating well, and barking her frustration at all of the attention her sister has been getting. And now we wait, to see what comes next.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my Young Adult novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.

            Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?

137 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.
← Older Posts
Newer Posts →