What You Don’t Realize about Quarantine by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn

Dr. Deb What You Don’t Realize About Quarantine

By Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.

“Nah, no problem,” I thought. “I’m a cave-woman anyway, at least in terms of being comfortable holed up in my cute little apartment on Empire. I can do quarantine.”

So I thought.

After all, I am sorry to say that I missed many days of taking a walk in the sun. Why there were times that I wouldn’t go out of my place for three whole days, so how can quarantine be a problem?

I wasn’t thinking that three days is not two weeks.

It really became a problem. I longed for sunshine and fresh air. But every time I opened the kitchen window on Nahal Me’or – the only window in the place I rented in Ramat Beit Shemesh – I was concerned that a gecko that found its way into the area between the screen and the window would jump into the house.

And besides that, there were bugs. Not bad bugs, thank G-d, but those little fruit flies that can be really an-

noying. So if I opened the window, either I was letting some of them out, or some of them in. It didn’t matter, but still, I didn’t want to take any chances.

I thought maybe the landlord put the gecko in there to eat the bugs. The bidud (quarantine) was for 14 days and that gecko never got a drop of water so I don’t know exactly how he stayed alive. I meant to google it but got busy with other things and never did. The landlord was surprised to hear about the gecko as he had not put it in there. The day before Yom Kippur, he assured me, however, that it would not need to be on my conscience if the gecko died.

I didn’t feel good about that and tried to carefully lift the screening that was hanging over the wrought iron bars, but the little fellow ran away to the other side of the window sill. I gave up on it.

But that was as close as I got to sunshine and fresh air and I have to say, not being an athletic person, being, in fact a sitter, it still was a strong temptation to sneak outside. Maybe during the cover of night, I could rush up the flight of stairs to the first floor and make it out to the dumpster with my garbage?

I didn’t do that, however, figuring that I’ve always kept my word and didn’t think it was the time not to. Also, theoretically, I could have contracted COVID and then I’d be breathing all those nasty germs into the environment.

On the other hand, I felt fine. I knew, in fact, that I was fine, don’t ask me why. I just knew. In the beginning of the COVID journey, five months ago, I was scared of getting sick and super careful about being out and about. Thank G-d, either I did a good job of avoiding contact, or I actually had contact but am really a bionic woman. I don’t know.

At the Purim seudah, the host ended up getting COVID and actually needed hospitalization. (He recovered, thank G-d, and came home about a week later.) There I was in his house but not a sniffle. The other side of it is that I got that awful auto-immune disease (which I wrote about before) so maybe my immune system was busy fighting everything (including me) but had too many fronts to fight on to give me the dreaded cytokine storm. Who knows?

In any event, before I made the application to the Ministry of Health to come to Israel, I knew I’d be fine. And so I am. So this bidud has felt from the beginning like being part of a game that doesn’t apply to me. Nevertheless, I’m playing the game. But today is Day 14, and that is so exciting! I can’t wait to walk up to Dolev to throw out my empty water bottles!

But my son warned me: It’s only 10 a.m. and my plane landed at 5:20 p.m. and Dolev is a high-traffic area, so someone could theoretically stop me and question me because it is not a complete 14 days.

Ooooooh.

That’s not good.

Yes, and I need to carry my ID, he continued because they might want to check. Now that really surprised me. Look what happened to Eretz Yisroel in the two years since I’ve come. That sounds suspiciously like a Police State. Doesn’t feel good. Okay, I won’t take out my recycling yet. Wait a few more hours.

I made a post about this on Facebook, and some Olim mentioned that the key to getting through quarantine is to have a large enough porch to be able to put a chair out there and enjoy the weather. Although I probably shouldn’t complain about the whole thing: the thermometer that the landlord conveniently left on the window sill (with the gecko) has been well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit mostly every day, so maybe staying in the pleasant air conditioning was a treat that I wasn’t appreciating. (True, the thermometer was in the sun but even my phone was saying the upper 90s.)

Other than my pining and sighing for the outdoors, the only other con-

cern I had, really, was how would I get through Yom Kippur.

First of all, I was still in bidud yesterday for it, and second of all, the country is in lockdown. I’m not sure if the shul was even open but the rabbi sent home a handy sheet with all the pages of davening to say or not to say for people davening at home. According to Shevy, my Israeli 9-year-old granddaughter, my son made a “shul” in the room he uses as an office, complete with chairs for everyone – all seven of them – and machzorim for those old enough to appreciate them. “We started at 9 a.m. and finished by 12!” she said proudly.

They visited after 5 p.m., bragging about their speedy davening, but I was still working my way through

This bidud has felt from the beginning like being part of a game that doesn’t apply to me.

Mussaf. Which brings me back to what had been worrying me beforehand: I’d lost 16 lbs. with the crazy auto-immune problem keeping me from eating, and everyone, absolutely everyone, from my children to my rabbi to my doctor, did not want me to fast on Shiva Asar b’Tammuz and even all of Tisha b’Av.

So the question then became:

Would I make it through Yom Kippur? The doctor told me that if I thought I would faint, I could have a little water. Great! So now I was worried about fainting! Which is why I took some breaks during davening to rest on the comfy bed. Bottom line, it was a very easy, relaxed Yom Kippur. And I did not faint.

I went right into Mincha given the lateness of the hour and found myself feeling more and more energetic as I realized that I was not that sick after all, and I could very well get through it all with no mishaps. (It shows the big role psychology plays here, doesn’t it?) In fact, by the end of the day, I was not only feeling decent, but pretty sure the message I was getting is that I’d been given another year.

Dr. Deb Hirschhorn is a Marriage and Family Therapist. If you want help with your marriage, begin by signing up to watch her Masterclass at https://drdeb. com/myw-masterclass.