Translator: Sigal Tifferet Reviewer: Ellen Maloney
Let's do an exercise, okay?
Take half a minute,
and feel like you have an itch at the tip of your nose.
And that itch is getting worse by the moment.
Restrain yourself for a moment -- don't scratch.
It can drive you crazy, right?
Wait another half a minute or so.
That's how it feels to be paralyzed almost entirely, like me,
from the neck down.
I wasn't born this way.
Until 2004, I scratched on my own, and freely.
In 2004, like many youngsters newly discharged from the military,
I also set out on a big trip to the Far East.
I backpacked with a friend in India and Nepal,
and we set out to ascend the Himalayan mountain range,
to do one of the most popular treks in that part of the world,
the "Annapurna Circuit."
After more than two weeks of trekking,
we wanted to return to the capital, Kathmandu.
We rose early in the morning, it was a very rainy morning,
the eve of Rosh Hashana.
And we climbed into the bus.
It was a very old bus,
packed full of people, some sitting on the roof.
A journey in the Far East -- you know.
The ride started,
and as in other rides in the Far East,
there are many sharp turns and scary bypassing you would never take.
Add the dangerous roads, and the twisted narrow paths,
and you get an extreme experience, almost an extreme sport.
At first you are scared, you cant believe they drive like that.
But you see all the people around you keeping calm,
and gradually you get used to it, as well.
And after a few rides, you just put you earphones on,
turn the music up, close you eyes, and wait for it to end.
That's how I traveled this time as well,
Berry Sakharof and Aviv Gefen's song, "End of the World" was playing in my ears,
and I'm drowsy, feeling my head slowly falling,
and I start to fall asleep.
And then, in one of the turns,
our bus driver loses control,
and our bus falls and plunges 25 meters down the abyss.
The drop from the top to the abyss took a few seconds.
There were a few seconds of silence,
followed by sudden and great chaos.
People trying to extract themselves from the bus,
screaming, and blood all around,
and no one really understanding what exactly had happened.
I got a hard blow to my head and neck, and started bleeding.
We were trying to figure out what to do from here,
but nothing came to mind.
I remember one of my friends trying to pull me out of the bus.
At this stage, my travel mates pulled me out of the river,
and lifted me up the mountain, to get to the road.
The dismantled bus was lying at the bottom of the abyss.
As a result of the hard blow to my head, it was difficult for me to breath,
and I was especially troubled by the scorching sun.
My friends pulled me up the mountain to get to the road.
We arrived at the road, and I remember them trying to hitchhike,
while I'm lying down on the road,
with a woman holding an umbrella over me, protecting me from the sun.
After a few minutes, a jeep pulls up and takes us.
And after an hour and a half, the car breaks down.
His clutch broke.
We get off, and my friends try to catch another ride.
By the way, this whole time I'm fully conscious.
I remember everything.
After three hours of driving, we arrive at the hospital.
Throughout the entire ride to the hospital,
I was bleeding from my head, lying on my friend's lap,
who was making sure I don't swallow my tongue,
and resuscitating me.
Later we found out that 15 passengers died in the accident,
including the guy sitting to my left, who was our guide in the past two weeks.
I remember my friend rushing me into the intensive care unit,
and leaving me alone with the doctor.
I can't speak.
I can barely breathe.
And I feel myself slowly losing it.
For three hours, I managed to grasp on to life.
but there, in those minutes at the hospital,
I feel myself letting go, starting to dive and not coming back.
After a few minutes, the doctor left the room,
apologized to my friend,
and told him that he just can't save me.
I don't actually remember this stage,
but I was told about it later.
My friend told me that he walked in the room
and saw me lying down,
my face completely blue,
and then like in a movie,
he swung his fist and landed it strongly on my chest,
and suddenly I take a gasp of air and opened my eyes.
To stabilize me, they had to connect me to a respirator, first through my mouth,
but when they understood the severity of my situation,
they operated on me
and inserted the oxygen tube directly into my trachea.
From that moment on,
my life has been totally dependent on the machine.
Aside from that pleasure,
to stabilize my neck, they used a device taken from a torture dungeon,
and used it to fix my head to my shoulder, using four screws.
And once in a while, the doctor would come with a screwdriver,
and give a so called positive reinforcement.
The preliminary diagnosis was a neck spinal cord injury.
I stayed a full week at the hospital in Nepal.
A hallucination filled week; half awake, half asleep.
I remember how day turned to night in the window.
After a week, I was ready to go back to Israel.
After a 17 hour flight, in which I was heavily sedated --
missing out on the meals and movie --
we arrived at the Tel Hashomer hospital.
There, in the ICU, the doctors took my parents aside
and told them their son
will be completely paralyzed from the neck down,
his entire life.
Bedridden, connected to a respiratory machine,
with no ability to interact with his surroundings.
"He doesn't stand a chance," they told my parents.
Statistically, he has no chance of improving.
After two and a half months, I could speak again
and the doctors decided I could be disconnected
from the respiratory machine.
That was when I said my first words. It was like being reborn.
The hospitalization period had its ups and downs.
I shifted between despair and hope, success and failure,
reality and the obscure.
I remember hours of attempts
to roll the wheelchair in the long hallways at Tel Hashomer.
Trying and failing.
And even when I succeeded, progress was very very slow.
But after a year, I could finally leave the hospital and return home.
You would be surprised, it wasn't such a happy moment for me.
Truthfully, I wasn't sure I wanted to leave.
You see, for a year, I was surrounded by people who took care of me
and by people like me, on wheelchairs.
And suddenly, I had to comprehend that most people walk on two legs.
and don't have a wheelchair rolling from place to place.
Moreover, I had to comprehend that people out there
are not dependent on anyone to do anything.
They could sit alone, at their cafe,
drinking their own coffee without the need to calculate
the angle of the cup approaching the mouth,
so that the sip is successful with no spills.
They could sit and eat their breakfast at their own pace,
not needing to explain the amount of salt they want,
or that the tomato should be eaten before the omelet.
One day I visited a very good friend of mine
and I spoke to her mother about life, and my chances for rehabilitation.
And she said something that made me think.
She said: "There is no such thing as statistics or odds.
Set your own statistics."
You know, sometimes you need to hear the right words at the right time,
so that an internal movement can start.
At that moment I understood that I had a choice.
I decided to choose to fulfill all the plans I had, before the accident.
One of those plans was to get my bachelor's degree.
Honestly, I didn't exactly know what I wanted to study, or where.
Moreover, I had no idea how I would do it --
homework, essays, tests.
How could I -- completely paralyzed from the neck down -- do this?
I went to the Ruppin Academic Center
for an interview with the head of the Economics and Management department
and she finished the conversation with a sentence that changed everything.
She said they have no experience with someone with my kind of disbaility,
and she has no idea how we'll do it.
But she was sure of one thing, that we will succeed.
And with that sentence, I set off.
And for four years, I learned to learn all over again.
I would do most of the calculations in my head,
and believe me, there are a lot of calculations in economics.
Let me take you to a course in finance.
Try solving this equation in your head.
What's your result?
0.03.
But leave it, that's not the point.
All in all, I managed quite well
and I attained my BA with distinction.
So I decided to return to Ruppin again.
And two years ago, I completed with distinction
my MBA in business administration.
Last year, I returned to Ruppin for the third time,
this time as a teaching assistant.
(Applause)
After graduation, it seemed only natural
to set out to the labor market and look for a job.
I went to many job interviews
in which some of the managers looked at me skeptically,
and could not figure out how I planned to manage the job.
But eventually, I got a job interview at Cellcom
and was accepted.
I have been working there for five years, as an analyst,
and I serve as the company's accessibility coordinator,
on behalf of the worker's union.
Honestly, I never asked why this happened to me,
because in my view, it doesn't really matter.
Because in the world around us things just happen.
But we have the ability to give them meaning,
and this ability to choose is tremendous.
But most of us don't notice it.
So why don't we use this tremendous ability we have,
the ability to choose the meaning of what happens to us in life.
I chose to view the accident as something that changed me for the best,
and I'll give you an example.
In high school, I was an average student.
If not for the accident, I probably would not have completed
two degrees with distinction.
The accident made me strive for more,
to prove to myself and everyone else that I can.
You know what, a while ago, I thought to myself,
in hindsight, would I have chosen not to have the accident?
And my answer is conclusive --
No.
I know, it sounds completely dellusional, and perhaps dishonest,
but for me it's simple.
Thanks to the accident, my view of life has completely changed.
I see myself as an upgraded version of myself before the accident.
Of course, if someone would approach me today,
and ask if I want to be in an accident in Nepal,
I would politely refuse.
But looking back, I've grown, I've changed for the best,
and I have learned so much about life,
that I probably would have never learned,if not the accident.
My main source of resilience is my family.
You were there from the second the bus fell to the abyss,
and you haven't left me for a moment.
(Applause)
You are my punching bag when I need one,
you lift me up when I'm down, you make me stronger.
I don't take it for granted.
I have no doubt, I wouldn't be standing here today
without your support.
So I invite you all, every one of you,
to choose the meaning of your life experiences.
I chose to give my life a positive meaning.
I travel the country and the world.
I have had a loving relationship for the last three years,
I set goals and conquer peaks, just as I did in Nepal,
feeling victorious.
Thank you.
(Applause)