Skip to content
Menu
beitmalkhut.org
  • contact us
  • yizkor—minyan remembrances
  • tzaddik stories
  • seymour fromer z”l
    • mira z. amiras — san francisco
    • harold lindenthal — nyc and hartford
    • fred rosenbaum, brooklyn and berkeley
    • joe hoffman, jerusalem
  • jewish mysticism, magic, and folklore
    • study group topics and schedule
  • recommended readings
    • death and dying
    • selected articles by todd
    • selected articles by ovid
    • selected articles by mira
beitmalkhut.org

daily kaddish: nose surgery, percocet, and pants

Posted on 30 March 2011 by erin

[powerpress]

Today is Candy Pants’ Yahrtzeit, and I had hoped to write and play kaddishim for her tonight, but I had yet another nose surgery this morning—number four inside a year. This time, a bilateral valve trimming to clean up the right-nostril valve trim from December and also trim the left-nostril valve while we were at it. This is an outpatient procedure done under local anesthetic. No big deal. I took myself out for Korean for lunch afterward, even.

Then I got in the car to drive home. That’s when the local anesthetic started wearing off. By the time I got home, I was in such severe pain I’m not sure I should have been driving. I took a percocet. Within an hour or so, I felt better. By dinnertime I felt decent again, but after dinner when I went to play a Kaddish—well, holy crap, Mira!

I took another percocet.

I concluded the obvious: I’m not up to marking Candy’s Yahrtzeit tonight. My brain is too numb from the pain and the percocet to write, and my nose hurts to much to throw myself into playing. I am, therefore, exercising my understanding of Jewish tradition wherein one is excused from one’s observational obligations when sick. We’ll just have to mark Candy’s Yahrtzeit tomorrow and make do with an ordinary daily kaddish today.

So I played a kaddish. The pain was just annoying while I played, but afterward when I was bouncing it to disk—holy crap, Mira!

This feels weirdly appropriate, though. As I’ll write in her kaddish (tomorrow, I hope), Miss Pants had a life full of medical challenges. Candy’s stamina in the face of pain, surgery, Elizabethan collars, and inadequate pain management for arthritis was remarkable, and playing what I could of a kaddish through pain for her seems fitting.

And now I’m taking my percocet-jelled brain and throbbing nose to bed.

2 thoughts on “daily kaddish: nose surgery, percocet, and pants”

  1. Reb Deb says:
    31 March 2011 at 12:20

    R’fuah shleymah. Feel better. I didn’t even know that noses had valves, thought only horns did.

    I don’t off-hand know what our tradition says about observing mitzvot while sick. But whoever is engaged in one mitzvah is exempt from having to do another; and while there isn’t one explicit source of a mitzvah to heal (oneself), it is absolutely accepted and taken for granted in Jewish tradition that it’s a responsibility.

    Reply
  2. erin says:
    31 March 2011 at 12:38

    That’s what another member of our virtual minyan had mentioned to me last time I had a valve trim and wasn’t sure what my playing situation would be.

    Yep, noses have valves. Take a quick, sharp breath in through your nose. Does it shut off? Try again mire slowly–does it open? Those are the valves I just had trimmed, because mine were too big and blocked air even in the open position. They’re right at the transition from nostril to upper passage, and he trimmed them usin what looked like nail scissors. Surreal experience! But great when your nose works better afterward.

    Reply

Leave a Reply to Reb Deb Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Categories

  • kaddish in two-part harmony (552)
    • essays (158)
    • guest essays (11)
    • podcasts (388)
    • project news (13)
    • tzaddik stories (31)
  • Seymour Fromer z"l (16)
  • the rebbe's queer daughters (11)

Posts

  • kaddish for anke akevit (2015-20)
  • a kaddish for too many suicide victims—but it gets better!
  • a kaddish for sigrid syltetøy vang, b. 2006, d. 27 February 2018
  • guest kaddish: velvet marquesa flicka storm, 11 august 2005–9 april 2015
  • the stones I cannot place
  • oh amy, how could you — a kaddish for amy smith
  • guest kaddish: Gudrun Fossum Vang (16 June 1905–3 April 1972)
  • occasional kaddish: for Josephine Selvig Anderson (11 April 1915– 22 January 2012)
  • and death is so much closer than it was—a kaddish for rebecca fromer
  • easy come easy go: a kaddish for adrienne cooper
  • nyt remembrances—a kaddish for departed strangers
  • guest kaddish from David Mohr—for Kimba
  • killing you loudly—a kaddish
  • anything, anything but a mystical experience
  • daily kaddish: our project’s yahrtzeit

Contact the authors

email mira and erin: kaddish@beitmalkhut.org

Archives

anthropology backstage cats Charlotte Adams China choreography collaboration dads death death and dying divorce dogs exhaustion grief japan Jewish identity John Manning kabbalah kaddish life cycle Magnes Museum Malkah Middle East moms mourning murder music musicians musicology parenting piano ritual Sephardi Seymour Fromer Space Place suicide supine text the rebbe's queer daughters tzaddik tzaddik stories University of Iowa women writing yahrtzeit

Copyright

© 2010–22 by Mira Z. Amiras and Erin Vang (beitmalkhut.org). All rights reserved worldwide.

thank you—תודה רבה

Permission to use Lev Kogan's "Kaddish," © 1982 by Israel Brass Woodwind Publications
In-kind support: Global Pragmatica LLC®

meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
©2022 beitmalkhut.org | Powered by WordPress & Superb Themes