Hours Before Heart Failure, Hashem Opened the Right Doors

I had been married for a year and a half, and our baby was just six months old.

It was Tuesday morning, the 14th of Cheshvan, and I woke up feeling absolutely awful. I dragged myself to the bathroom and threw up. Then I went back to sleep, still feeling terrible. That morning, my husband was about to start a new job. I told him I felt really sick. He wished me well and left.

All day long I felt terrible. I had a low fever and was exhausted. The next day, I still didn’t feel better, so I went to the doctor. He examined me and said it was probably a virus or the flu. He told me to rest.

But rest didn’t help.

I got worse. I couldn’t get out of bed. My baby lay beside me in his crib, and I only got up to feed him and change him. After that, I went right back to bed, completely worn out.

On Shabbat, we were invited to eat at a friend’s house, just two streets away. I could barely walk there. I literally dragged myself. It was my birthday Shabbat, but I had no energy to celebrate. Some friends came over that night, but they saw how drained I was and left early.

By Sunday morning, I knew something was seriously wrong. I wanted to go back to the doctor, but I didn’t even have the strength to walk ten minutes to the clinic. I couldn’t move. My husband was at work in a place without cell reception, so I couldn’t even talk to him.

But I called my father. He heard my voice and immediately knew something was very wrong. He told me to make an appointment and said, “I’m coming to take you.” Just so you understand my father lives over an hour away from me.

I scheduled an appointment online with a family doctor through my health fund. My father arrived, picked me up, and took me to the clinic.

When we got there, it turned out the system had made a mistake. I had scheduled an appointment with what I thought was a family doctor, but she was actually a pediatrician. She refused to even look at me. The secretary told us to come back in the afternoon. I was beyond exhausted, holding back tears, but I nodded and began to walk away.

My father stopped me. “What do you mean, walk away? Can’t you see how she looks?” he said to the secretary. “Find a doctor who can see her now!”

Honestly, I didn’t even realize how bad I looked. But the secretary looked closely at me and realized he was right. She tried convincing the pediatrician to just take a quick look, but she wouldn’t budge.

Then the secretary said, “Let’s try the nurses’ room. Maybe they can help.”

We walked over. Miraculously, no one else was there, so all the nurses focused on me. An even bigger miracle, one of the nurses on duty was a specialist in diabetes. She took one look at my dry lips and pale face and asked me to get on the scale.

I was shocked.

I had lost seven kilos in just two weeks and not because I was trying. I’ve always been naturally thin. The nurse immediately checked my blood sugar. From that moment, everything happened fast. She called the doctor, gave me an insulin injection, and within five minutes, I was on a stretcher in an ambulance with sirens, racing to the hospital.

After several hours and many IVs, I finally understood what had happened. I had developed Type 1 diabetes. It usually starts in childhood, but in my case, it had waited quietly and appeared after the birth of my baby.

But the full miracle only hit me later. The doctors told me I was hours away from heart failure. The high sugar levels had drained all the essential nutrients from my body. I was literally on the edge of death. If I had gone home that day to come back for an afternoon appointment there wouldn’t have been anyone left to return, Heaven forbid.

Everything that happened, the fact that my father called me, heard the panic in my voice, and drove more than an hour to pick me up, that he demanded someone see me, that the secretary thought of the nurses’ room, that the diabetes nurse happened to be there, none of this was random. These were miracles that Hashem sent, step by step, to save my life.

Seven years have passed since then. I manage my diabetes with patience and awareness. And every single day, I thank Hashem that I’m alive. That I’m here to raise my son and the two children who came after him, thank God.