Keren Peles Shares Her Difficult Experience: "A Kind-Hearted Angel of 7 Strokes My Hand"

Singer Keren Peles, who was hospitalized two weeks ago at 'Beilinson' after a particularly stressful series of performances, shares her difficult feelings and the tough experience she went through there. "This is the first time Advil doesn't move me," she opens and writes, alongside pictures of her from the hospital. "I go on stage with a headache - not canceling. Flying with you. Virus, who did you think you attacked? Pathways of breath open to pathways of the soul.

"The boundaries of the body are breached and every action seems possible. We are whole, from the world being broken and mended again. Coming off the stage, I burst into extreme tears, as if someone died or was born. I remember my head exploding, probably didn't take it with me on stage. People come to hug and my stomach growls, the food seems too far away. I take another pill, another one, it's unclear how many types I tried - nothing works. I've known this body since about the day it was born. Something bad is brewing."

She arrives in the artists' room, thinking about her husband Noam and her children, who flew on vacation. She was supposed to join them the next day but "the nape is hard as a rock, pressure in the eyes and soon the ears will pop off my head," she shares in the difficult feeling. "Trauma room. An impatient hand lifts me, a few times I was asked to sit, because you can't take measurements like that. Later I was the old woman in the hallway, an authoritative voice said it was urgent. A moment ago I was flying and now I am a stationary bone on a rolling bed. They take me from here to there. Poking wires attached to a hand that doesn't hold a microphone, holds nothing anymore."

At this point, she realizes that she is hospitalized in the neurology department and from there imagines the best view in the world - her children. "Two CT scans. Three MRIs. A robot scans four areas from the head to the chest. When they're not taking blood, they're infusing fluids. And one day a professor comes in to explain that the antibiotics didn't work, so they try a new direction. An unpleasant procedure but relatively simple and when we finish it we'll know if I got into trouble. Before the procedure, I do a video call and see my children. Through the usual innocence bursts with ice-cold panic. So I try to blur everything that's scary in the background, the wires, the devices, the pajamas I'm wearing, and smile. It doesn't really work... Kids don’t buy a fake smile from Petach Tikva.

"They didn't want me to sleep because I need to tell them exactly what I feel and where. A journey through a tunnel of exposed nerve pain. The professor said there's no danger to life. He was nice and reassured me, but on the other hand also promised it would hurt. 'Flying with what you have involves quite a bit of suffering, so it's up to you' - I considered. The longing weighed more. At the airport, a plane passed through the softness. In the metal detector, my head exploded only from the inside. I fell on a tourist who got the hint and so everyone who sat next to me simply evaporated.

"From here they help me walk, return to myself. Lying in the back seat and a kind-hearted angel of 7 strokes my hand. The heart melts, how in a moment roles change - she's the mom and I'm a child. I didn't cry anymore, I won't let them see me broken and that's the best medicine I got on the way to completion. I have wanted to write to you for a very long time, just waiting for the story to tell me what. I haven't longed to sing like this in ages. To pour songs on you like a flood that found a cloud break. In love with life for all it brings and not angry at the body that dropped me. For the first time, even allowing myself to let the lips fall, not just smile. Exposing weakness, with no fake. To be truly happy," she concludes.

About a month ago, Peles was filmed in a performance alongside Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi, when she went on stage and said in a hoarse whisper that she canceled all performances of those days, except for this one. "Rabbanit Yemima blessed me before I went on stage. I find myself strengthening in my faith. I told Hashem, please let my voice return, b'ezrat Hashem".