Finding the Answer, Blazing the Trail

Frimet Blum, Blumarketing

Esther Grossman doesn’t get fazed. Not when the printer breaks down minutes before a deadline and not when her toddler cracks a dozen eggs onto her just-washed floor. But when she called Chaim Medical Resource six months ago, she couldn’t keep the panic from her voice.

“The doctors are saying terrible things,” she said.

Esther’s story began with a cough. It was persistent—she’d finish a round of antibiotics only to be back at square one a day later. Then she developed severe stomach pains. Her blood test results were a confusing mess of numbers. For lack of a clearer diagnosis, her doctors said it had to be cancer—but they changed their minds when a painful surgery revealed no tumors. Even the famed Mayo Clinic offered no clarity. All they knew was that this was a medical mystery and that Esther was getting sicker by the day. They offered no hope.

At that point, Esther called Chaim Medical Resource.

“I’d heard that they solve medical mysteries,” Esther said. “But I was skeptical. I mean, Mayo Clinic couldn’t get a diagnosis. They did a million-dollar workup on me with no results.” But Chaim Medical started from scratch.

“We pored over her blood results and found a clue,” says Pessy Schlafrig, co-director of the organization. She sent Esther’s bloodwork to a doctor in Texas Children’s Hospital known as the world expert in such conditions, who figured out the diagnosis. Esther had a rare disease that affects only ten people in the US each year! It is treatable—but that doctor deals only with children. And hospital protocol is notoriously rigid.

Somehow, Chaim Medical got the pediatric specialist to treat Esther. And today, she’s back—still unfazed by the daily grind, but uncharacteristically emotional when she tells her story.

“Chaim Medical saved my life,” she says. “I have no words.”

One mission. Thousands of lives.

Esther is one of thousands who all say the same thing. Chaim Medical Resource stops at nothing to save a life. Even when doctors offer no hope. Even when there’s no apparent path to a cure.

Chaim Medical Resource was founded fifteen years ago, after thirteen-year-old Chaim Kahan a”h succumbed to a brain tumor. His mother, Mrs. Shevy Kahan, was heartbroken—and determined to help others going through medical journeys. The organization bears Chaim’s name—a clarion call for its mission of life.

The organization quickly mushroomed into a medical resource empire, with 63 medical experts covering virtually every illness and condition affecting every organ and system. Their directory reads like the directory of a major hospital, with divisions including orthopedics, endocrinology, maxillofacial disorders, and many others. Nothing is beyond their purview.

“There are stories every day,” says Shevy Kahan, founder and director of Chaim Medical. “There are people dealing with genetic diseases, there are mothers we help with fetal medicine, there are teens with Crohn’s and colitis. And there are so many cancer cases, so many cancer cases.” She sighs. “It’s hard to hear the stories. Cholei Yisrael suffer so much. But we’re driven to help them.”

That drive is what led Chaim Medical to Lakewood.

Blazing the trail in Lakewood

“We helped a lot of Lakewood patients over the years,” she says, and lists many. “We were zocheh to help the mashgiach, Rav Matisyahu Soloman, and his rebbetzin. The rosh yeshivah, Rav Malkiel Kotler, said, ‘I personally have tremendous hakaros hatov to Chaim Medical.’ And there are so many people in the community we were able to help.”

But from the calls coming in from Lakewood, it became obvious that more was needed. Patients were not getting the best care available in the state—and so, Chaim Medical Resource set out to explore the medical trail in New Jersey; literally blazing the trail to unearth great local specialists who weren’t known in the community.

Of course, the organization does not hesitate to send patients out of state. They do whatever it takes to save lives. That includes researching experimental drug trials, finding the best doctor for a particular patient, and putting the most brilliant minds in the heimishe world together to find solutions to the thorniest medical dilemmas.

All this means the world to cholim in Lakewood and its environs. In the few short weeks since the launch of the Blazing the Trail campaign, dozens of new patients from the community have reached out to Chaim Medical Resource for assistance. They are thrilled to have the opportunity to give back by contributing to the campaign.

Pave a path for Chaim Medical

Chaim Medical stops at nothing to save lives. But it depends on the generosity and goodwill of the community to keep it going. The organization has a large staff that includes 63 medical experts and specialty staff members who expedite appointments, facilitate hospital transfers, do hospital advocacy, work with air transport companies, and do everything possible to help cholei Yisrael.

Their budget is a mind-boggling $9.3 million. Every dollar raised is spent on one thing: saving and bettering lives.

This week, Lakewood, Tom’s River, Jackson, and the surrounding communities will be part of a massive Charidy campaign, Blazing the Trail. The campaign aims to support local cholim by enabling Chaim Medical to continue its work in the area.

Join Chaim Medical Resource by participating in Blazing the Trail. Your donation saves lives.

Donate at charidy.com/chaimlakewood.

 

What does it mean to Blaze the Trail?

The Blazing the Trail campaign is aptly named because the organization is trailblazing in its efforts to save lives. Like explorers creating a path, they enter uncharted medical territory. When doctors say there’s nothing to do, they find a way. When obstacles crop up in a case, they forge through them. When medical storms arise—and they always do—they brave the elements, seek solutions, and do whatever they can to protect the patient.

“The doctors said my husband was going to die from his liver disease, but they didn’t know about Chaim Medical,” one woman says. Today her husband is alive—thanks to Chaim Medical’s connections and perseverance.

 

 

Model of Heart

There was a plastic model of a heart on the desk, and the doctor had turned it to face us.

“This is the vena cava,” he said, his fingers tracing a thick blue tube. “It’s the main vein, leading to the heart and major organs.” I leaned in and concentrated hard. For a moment, I was back in ninth grade. As a bored fourteen-year-old, I’d crammed my way through biology, memorizing the names of body parts before tests and then promptly discarding the information.

But this was different. This was my child he was talking about. Vena cava wasn’t a word I had to dredge up for a test; it was Shimmy’s heart! His future! His life!

We’d come to the emergency room because nine-year-old Shimmy had been listless all Shabbos. He hadn’t joined the neighbors outside—not even for the Shabbos party. When I found him whimpering on the couch and thought his lips looked blue, I’d called Hatzolah. And now the doctor was saying terrible things.

“Shimon has a tumor,” he said. “It’s malignant.” And as if that wasn’t enough; as if I wasn’t flailing for a handhold to keep me from falling, he forged on.

“The tumor is in a very sensitive spot. We can’t remove it. He’d bleed to death in surgery.”

My chin jolted upward in shock. “So—so what are you going to do?” I asked. “Chemotherapy? Radiation?”

He looked down before answering. “Yes, we’ll give him chemotherapy and radiation. But those will prolong his life, not save it.”

We somehow stumbled out of his office, down the hall, and into the elevators. We couldn’t go to Shimmy’s bedside. Not like this, with tears streaming down both our faces. It was only when we were outside, taking big gulps of air, that we paused.

“What are we going to tell the children?” I asked. “And our parents? And Shimmy! Poor, poor Shimmy!” I covered my face with my hands and cried and cried and cried—for my little boy, for my family, for myself.

“We can’t just give up,” my husband said.

I looked at him through burning eyelids. And then a thought sprang to mind. “Chaim. Call Chaim Medical,” I whispered.

I can’t describe what it meant to us when a Chaim Medical counselor picked up the phone. First she asked for Shimmy’s medical records. Then she called the doctor—and challenged him! She asked questions of this high-and-mighty oncologist whose word we’d taken as fact. And he listened to her!

It was obvious that the name Chaim Medical Resource was respected in this famous hospital’s corridors. The counselor dropped medical terms like a tree drops leaves. But after that phone call, the doctors looked at us differently. We weren’t just a couple from Lakewood; we had an army behind us.

It was such a relief to know that we weren’t alone, that the fight for Shimmy’s life was on, and that Chaim Medical Resource was going to leave no stone unturned in their effort to save it.

We didn’t know until later that a Chaim Medical Resource team, including Shevy Kahan, her partner Pessy Schlafrig, and several other brilliant staff members, had gone through our son’s file with a fine-toothed comb. They’d studied it from every angle and come up with a startling revelation.

They believed that Shimmy’s tumor was 100 percent operable! True, it was on the inferior vena cava, and it was complicated. But his heart could be put “on hold” on an ECMO machine—a technological marvel that performs the functions of the heart—throughout the procedure. The solution seemed so obvious; it was unconscionable that none of the doctors had considered it!

When Chaim Medical called a conference of the medical team, the doctors hemmed and hawed. No one would say exactly why ECMO—Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation—was not an option. Until Mrs. Kahan posed the million-dollar question: Does this hospital, one of the most renowned medical centers in the nation, have an ECMO machine? The answer was no.

In order for Shimmy to be put on ECMO, he would have to be transferred out of their hospital. And so, they’d given up on him. Put him on palliative care instead of sending him elsewhere where he could be saved!

If not for Chaim Medical Resource, I shudder to think of what could have happened. Because at Chaim Medical, there’s no agenda. There are no external considerations. There’s only one mission that underlines everything they do: saving lives.