Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Update from Khaya Dinsky

12th Jan 2009 Not a good day : Well, I made it to physiotherapy. Had an anxiety attack on the way, but not as bad as when Simha was with me. I knew she was "safe" at home.I went up to the third floor where physiotherapy is - everything except the shelter and the bathrooms was closed. So I went back down. Turns out they"re using a room on the first floor - not taking a chance that the roof of the shelter may or may not be strong enough up on top. And of course, a lot of the stuff they usually do, they can't - one because the equipment is upstairs and two ,because they can't put you into a position that you can't get out of and run fast. One guy that was having treatment on his legs had his pants off and was really worried what he would do if he had to run. Luckily for him there wasn't a siren again until several hours later. When I got home, I had a headache, pressure in chest, breathing difficulty and a twitch (tic) in my lip. It has been coming and going all day.all of them. It had gotten a little better, after I took acamol(like tylenol) and had a nap, but then the siren went and woke me up and it got worse again. This time the siren was around 1pm/ Hit a house right near my school, like a block away. No one was hurt, but that is really a miracle. The house was really badly damaged. A woman that had just put a kid into her car and buckled her into her carseat, jumped out of the car and got the kid out and they ran into the house next door)lucky she picked the right house. The car was really badly damaged and there were metal poles that had come from the rocket in her seat and in the kid's seat. People here are more and more convinced that we are seeing miracles every day - the amazing number of near-misses, of rockets that land in empty lots instead of the nearest house, the people that managed to get to safety seconds before rockets hit and explode. As someone put it : "nissim gluyim" - observable miracles. There were several sirens in Beersheva today and Shlomo is there. So everythime they say there is a siren there, my heart dips. There were a bunch of those today. Shlomo says that where he is , there really isn't anywhere to run. He's on the ground floor of a two-story building. The safest place is the stairway. Simha was supposed to have school tomorrow. Her teacher had called yesterday to say there's school tomorrow for the twelfth graders. I told Simha to forget it. She called her teacher a little while ago to find out exactly how things will work tomorrow but the teacher said that the homefront command did not approve their school as being safe so they are not going back to school. That's good. Because otherwise, this teacher would have told her daughter's teacher that she should tell the principal and the ministry of educaation that I don't trust them with my daughter's life. Anyway, if I don't feel better later, or tomorrow, I'll probably call one of the trauma help lines. There are lots of them available to residents of the south. I'm hoping for a quiet night. You know, people here don't say "have a good day". People say "have a quiet day(or night)" and the answer is not "you too" the answer is "amen". And over shabbat when people say "shabbat shalom"(peaceful shabbat) the answer now is "amen" and people understand it much differently than usual. Khaya

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