The happenings of Thursday October 3, 2024 through Sunday October 6, 2024 travelling between Caesarea, Israel and Caesarea, Israel
For several weeks, Eitan had been complaining off and on about pain in his ear. When we arrived in Israel his ear pain had increased exponentially. Our first morning in Israel his pain spread from his ear to his cheek, tongue, and tooth. Both of my parents are doctors. They checked his ear and determined he did not have an ear infection. Nothing else suggested any other kind of infection. No fever, no swelling. We could not figure out what was wrong. By Shabbat his pain was intolerable. The poor kid was intermittently howling and crying – when he wasn’t having fun swimming or hanging out listening to Uncle Levi’s stories. In one of my more traditional parenting moments, I gave him some medicine and told him to try and handle his pain. Fair enough, he did not appreciate this approach.
On Sunday, Chaim and I had planned to take the boys sailing with Poppop, a favorite past time during my youth. Plans were cancelled when Eitan awoke with excruciating pain in his tooth. Feeling terribly about dismissing it the previous day and not being able to catch whatever “it” was before it got this bad, I quickly texted my sister-in-law for a dental recommendation. Thankfully, Israel has a six-day work week. The dentist was able to squeeze Eitan into his schedule without issue. Unfortunately, when Chaim took Eitan to the dentist he couldn’t find anything wrong. The dentist shaved down one of Eitan’s fillings to see if that would help and then sent them on their way. This did not help. We gave Eitan more medicine and then spent the rest of the day swimming and doing some math. We went to bed hoping Eitan’s toothache was behind us.
The next morning Eitan woke up with a low-grade fever and major swelling in his bottom right jaw. It was so swollen and hard it felt like a rock had grown overnight inside his mouth. Now I felt like an even more horrible parent. I immediately called the dentist who said he wanted to see Eitan as soon as possible. To say that Eitan felt vindicated about his howling over the last few days would be an understatement.
This time the dentist took an x-ray, which showed nothing. He suggested it could be a dental abscess and that Eitan would need a root canal, but nothing was definitive. In the meantime, he prescribed some amoxicillin to address what was an obvious infection. Since nothing showed up on the x-ray, my sister recommended that we take Eitan to a pediatrician just to make sure it wasn’t something other than a dental issue, especially since she couldn’t see Eitan’s jaw well enough over video. My brother – also a doctor – sent me the name of his family’s pediatrician who squeezed us in later that day. Worried about all of the potential illnesses we might be facing, my mother came with us this time just in case there were additional medical questions that needed to be asked. As soon as Eitan walked through the door the pediatrician said, “Oh. That’s a tooth thing.” Just to be on the safe side, he checked Eitan thoroughly. He prescribed Augmentin instead of Amoxycillin, which made more sense to me since this is what the boys took back home when they had infections. Within a couple of days of taking the antibiotic his fever and swelling went down.
That night we went to the main park in Caesarea for a tekes/assembly to mark a year since October 7. The tekes was beautifully done, led mostly by children and teenagers as is often the case in Israeli assemblies. Together, we celebrated lives of those taken too early and mourned the tremendous loss because of their absence. We listened to Sergeant First Class (res.) Adar Gavriel's sister who spoke about growing up in Caesarea and the young man Adar was becoming. Another life brutally taken. It was surreal sitting there with my family, all together, knowing there were and are still so many families waiting for their loved ones to be brought home. The boys appreciated being at the tekes; Chaim and I prepared ourselves for more difficult conversations.
Reflecting on the day, I acknowledged for the umpteenth time since October 7 how strange it is to continue life by doing the normal everyday things like taking care of my nine year old’s pain while constantly remembering there are still so many lost souls, hostages, and their loved ones whose ability to live life in these small ways was robbed from them.
Fittingly, it was a long and emotionally taxing day.
