From a Distance

I live in Detroit; most of my family is across the world in Australia. I miss all the everyday exchanges, the lazy Shabbos afternoons together, the “Can I get you anything from the supermarket” calls. Sometimes I must miss family simchahs… and I’m not around during the tough times, either. Those are the times that cement family and community, but from a distance, I can’t do anything to help other than daven.

No one in my family had heard of a diaphragmatic hernia until my nephew in Sydney was born on February 25, 2010. He was born with a hole in his diaphragm, and all the organs in his abdomen had moved through the hole and up into his chest, squashing his lungs, which hadn’t grown at all.

ICU babies usually have at least a bud of lungs; this baby didn’t have any.

As soon as he was born, he was given emergency surgery to close the hole, to put all his organs back where they were supposed to be.