Yuval Abramovitz - The List: Shout Your Dreams Out Loud to Make Them Come True

Copyright 2017 by Yuval Abramovitz

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Rain Saukas

Editor of the Hebrew edition: Anat Lev Adler

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-1845-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-1847-0

Printed in China

To my noble grandmother, the late Sophia Abramovitz, who had many dreams but was unable to realize them all.

To my beloved mother, Tamar Abramovitz, for raising me to always follow my heart.

And to my daughters, Shira and Noga, for helping me experience childhood for the second time around.

AT THE TENDER AGE OF SIXTEEN, MY LIFE AS I KNEW IT AND THE LIFE I HAD IMAGINED FOR MYSELF WAS OVER. AN ACCIDENT HAD FLIPPED MY WORLD UPSIDE DOWN.

It all happened when I was working at a steakhouse as a busboy, clearing tables. The lowest in the food chain of hospitality jobs. I was saving money for all the things a boy my age would wanta drivers license, new clothes, and CDs.

During one shift I was asked to bring a heavy barrel of pickles from the storage located next to the restaurant.

In the parking lot, between the restaurant and the storage room, there was a small and extremely slippery puddle. It was a viscous trap of motor oil, cooking oil, and detergent residue that was washed out of the restaurant on a daily basis.

Two weeks prior to my accident, the owner of the restaurant had himself slipped on that puddle and broken his arm. Being a responsible boy, I had mentioned to him on several occasions that he should cover the slippery puddle with a wooden deck to prevent further accidents, but he chose to ignore my advice. Then, before two weeks could pass, it was my turn.

Flying through the air, I landed right on the sewage lid, pickles scattering all around me. To this day, I can still hear the cracking sound of my skull when it hit the cold concrete. I remember the feeling of my head being practically yanked off my neck and my brain shaking in my head from one side to the other like a ping-pong ball. The back of my now bleeding neck hurt so badly that I was completely oblivious to the devastating injury in my lower back.

Diners and restaurant workers gathered around me, checking to see if I was conscious.

I was lifted up by three men, while the owner, still wounded and in a cast, orchestrated the whole operation. People yelled out: Get up! Lets see if you can walk! But I could barely stand. I felt dizzy and vomited twice.

An ambulance arrived, and I was rushed to hospital where I was immediately sent for X-rays and other medical tests. I notified the doctor at the ER that I had no sensation in my legs whatsoever, but when the results came back showing no evidence of any spinal injury, I was sent home. The doctors instructions were simplelie in bed for three days on a warm electric blanket, and I'd be as good as new in no time. The pain would be gone.

And he was right. The pain was gone, but so was any sensation in my legs. I woke up on the third day and couldnt even get myself out of bed. I was completely paralyzed, unable to stand or walk. It was the strangest sensation, as if I were hallucinating. I kept saying to myself, Get up! Stand on your feet now! But I just couldnt do it.

I pinched my legs: nothing.

I scratched them with my fingernails: nothing. No sensation.

I found a pen on the floor nearby and pricked my flesh with it. The leg bled, but I couldnt feel any pain.

Mom! Im paralyzed I cant move! I screamed out. She rushed to my room and started yelling orders at me: Try walking! Try standing!

Its probably just pins and needles, she said trying to remain calm, but I could see the panic in her eyes. She ran to the bathroom, grabbed a pair of tweezers, and started pinching my toes, my feet, my ankles, quickly working her way up my thighs.

I felt nothing.

My mother went and called a neighbor who was kind enough to carry me down to his car, and we drove to the nearest hospital. I was sent to the ER for an initial diagnosis. A solemn-faced doctor examined me with a reflex hammer and diagnosed a complete loss of sensation in the right leg and 60 percent function loss in the left one.

The suspected diagnosis: a spinal injury. Two hours later, I was sent to the neurological ward, where I was again hit with a reflex hammer and had electric currents run through my legs in the hope I would feel a tingle. The doctors were trying to determine just how far the paralysis had spread.

Three doctors, accompanied by an intrigued group of interns, came by my room to see with their own eyes what had become the wards talk-of-the-day. They wanted to know if the paralysis had spread as far as my genitals. Luckily that area was unaffected, thanks for asking!

After an exhausting night of test after test, the doctors were frustrated. The X-rays showed no fracture of the spine. There was no explanation of the reason for my paralysis, or an estimate of when, or if, my legs would ever function again. What they did notice was a slight movement of the lower vertebrae.

After being hospitalized for almost two months, there was no change in my condition. When it seemed pointless to keep me there, I was rolled home in my wheelchairmy new set of limbs. It turned out the doctors had planned it so that my hospitalization period would become a sort of practice and preparation for my new life. The life of a crippled sixteen-year-old.

During my stay I could feel the doctors getting desperate, then losing hope in finding any cure for my condition. In a final effort to stimulate my nervous system, they transmitted electrical currents through my legs right up until the day of my discharge. Then, declaring defeat, they put me in a wheelchair and sent me home to my new life.

I did not return to the hospital, nor did I go back to school. I was an eleventh-grader whose only consolation was that, due to my new circumstances, I was exempt from doing homework or studying for exams.

My bedroom became the new social hub. From 8 a.m. till midnight my room was filled with school friends who came by to cheer me up. Sometimes I would have as many as twenty people at my bedside. I remember these days being so joyful and full of shared experiences: watching TV and movies together, gossiping about anyone and everyone, and my favorite activity of them all, making prank calls.

But after a while Id had enough. The glamour of doing nothing and missing school expired, and I had to look reality in the eye. Despite my efforts to ignore the fact that I was paralyzed, life was providing me plenty of daily reminders. My close friends were going for their drivers licenses and planning their vacations. They were taking their final exams, falling in love, and their visits became more and more sporadic. I, on the other hand, was drawn more and more into a world of sickness, of physiotherapy sessions with geriatric patients who had broken their pelvises or suffered from heart diseases, patients who had lost their physical capacities and needed to relearn how to carry out simple tasks again. If that werent enough, the cortisone shots I was given had completely deformed my body. This wasnt how I imagined my teenage years.