Tamar's Race for Life
TELLER, HANOCH
Tamar's Race roRLife HANOCH TELLER When Tamar Amnon's parents came to Israel from South Yemen approximately 35 years ago, they brought nothing with them but their family and their faith, a faith...
...Tamar was booked to fly late that night...
...The hospital staff regarded withholding medical treatment as nothing less than criminal negligence...
...Since a liver transplant had never been successfully carried out in Israel, however, they would have to arrange for the operation to take place abroad—at a cost of more than $200,000...
...By the following morning, a New York office staffed by Rothenberg's brother, Aaron, was opened to follow through on the hundreds of pledges that were being called in...
...Time—and Tamar—were slipping away...
...A phone squad capitalized on the time difference between Israel and overseas, using it to their advantage by establishing an Asian, European and American bureau to solicit pledges over the phone whenever the time was most appropriate for dialing a particular corner of the world...
...How can you just stand there and watch her die...
...But the indefatigable ye-shivah students had reached an impasse—the $100,000 still wasn't there...
...Time was hemorrhaging...
...Paying for the transplant might be just the thing to buy her some good press...
...The irate vice-consul might have simply unplugged the telephone but instead he ranted and screamed a bit...
...they needed visas instantaneously...
...It was three hours to plane check-in...
...Although Tamar had already been admitted to Wyler, she would nevertheless have to wait her turn for a donor liver...
...the consul was already on the line...
...The liver, like Tamar, had several hours left...
...Together they prayed, but refused to give their consent to further medical intervention...
...Simcha then invested his very last phone token to call the emergency number listed on the embassy wall...
...Uri Abramowitz, specialist in the neonatal ward overseeing the Amnon case, could not control his rage...
...A trifle more amenable than before, the marine revealed the phone number of the person in charge of dealing with emergencies after hours...
...she could certainly use a publicity stunt...
...The wealthy celebrity agreed to the plan, provided that she personally fly the baby from Israel to the United States, a plan that—as tempting as it was—had to be rejected because of time considerations...
...An accident...
...They were wrong, as doctors have been known to be on occasion, but their calculations were not far off the mark...
...At first Rabbi Porush was displeased at being called out of a Knesset session and skeptical about the story he was told...
...The tickets acquired earlier in the day were for a flight that had already departed...
...At five months, tiny Tamar had suffered so much that some family members felt that she might have been better off if the medical profession hadn't tampered with her fate...
...Their sorrow was all the more keen for the guilt they felt: They had responded too late...
...The hospital officials were somewhere between remote and cynical over what they deemed a pathetically amateurish attempt by yeshivah boys to arrange and sponsor an urgent liver transplant...
...Coffers were filling up but the total raised was still far from the $100,000 needed...
...Their effort to raise the funds was a brief one...
...But someone in Detroit was number one on the waiting list...
...They must not let their daughter die...
...There was no assurance when the patient from Detroit would arrive...
...Simcha immediately notified home base...
...Since there is no way of knowing when a suitable liver will be found, individuals needing transplants wait at home, prepared to travel to the hospital immediately upon notification that a liver is available...
...Simultaneously, dozens of field workers staked out Jerusalem's hotels to solicit contributions from visitors...
...With the visas signed and sealed, the vice-consul inquired if there was anything else he could do...
...Several trans-Atlantic phone calls later, Porush was ready to activate whatever means he had at his disposal...
...Instead they turned to several religious leaders who shared their oudook...
...However, no sooner had she arrived in Chicago than a suitable pediatric liver became available...
...For technical reasons, the tickets had to be paid for in cash so, at 11:30 p.m., yet another committee member was dispatched to raise several thousand dollars in cash...
...Realizing that they were dealing with career bureaucrats—experts in not releasing funds—the delegation resorted to an alternate plan of attack: the political route...
...In record time Simcha and the head of the Israeli bureau arrived at Tel Hashomer Hospital...
...The fax was terse and un-embellished, bare of the usual greetings and salutations that mark correspondence addressed to a foreign service employee of the vice-consul's stature...
...But for Tamar," Dr...
...But without the $100,000, the process could not even begin...
...The doctors didn't think she could make it to five months...
...Two hours and 40 minutes after it was decided to go ahead and implant the liver in Tamar Amnon, a hospital spokesperson told a nervous caller from Jerusalem that a well-preserved donor liver had been engrafted...
...The consul did not even bother protesting the invasion of his privacy...
...By the time Tamar was eight weeks old, she'd been poked and prodded and palpated by more doctors than most of us see in a lifetime...
...Simcha explained to the marine on duty that this was a genuine emergency that warranted disturbing the consul...
...While the Detroit patient was 27,000 feet above ground, a medical conference was convened below at Wyler Children's Hospital...
...She had to be kept alive somehow until she was five years old, the youngest age at which a liver transplant has a good chance of success...
...The diplomat's attitude changed quickly...
...Look around this room," he said frantically to the Amnons...
...Tamar, he was told, had a week to live— unless she underwent a liver transplant...
...As he did so, his facsimile machine began spewing forth a transmission from a prominent New \brk attorney who knew just the right names to drop...
...It was too late...
...All of the sleep-deprived brain power at headquarters was now directed at uncovering some fresh connections to generate American cooperation...
...They convinced Knesset member Avraham Ravitz of the Orthodox Degel haTorah party to use his political clout with the director general of Kupat Cholim...
...It was wrong to do nothing, this feeling told them...
...Sometime during the course of the ,New York-bound flight, Children's Hpspital of Pittsburgh concluded that it was not the proper venue to perform the transplant...
...As the weeks passed, signs of deterioration became evident...
...A liver must become available before an operation can be scheduled...
...A self-proclaimed queen of a hotel empire, but perhaps better known as the "Queen of Mean," had been sentenced to four years in a tiny cell with three other prisoners, slapped with a $7 million fine and a $1.6 million bill for unpaid federal and state taxes and, once the jail term was up, 750 hours of community service caring for infants born addicted to drugs or suffering from AIDS...
...A quirk of fate...
...For some odd reason no ohe was there at 9:45 p.m...
...Within 36 hours Rothenberg and his colleagues were determined to acquire an invitation from Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh to perform the operation, a discharge from Tel Hashomer Hospital, a transfer of all the relevant documents and test results to the United States, visas, tickets and, first and foremost before any of the other steps could be taken, a $100,000 deposit in Children's Hospital's account...
...A New York staffer reported that a public relations representative was intrigued by the idea...
...Minutes later the threesome arrived at Tel Hashomer Hospital, the vice-consul still attired in his nightwear...
...Simcha Rothenberg, a 31-year-old American student attending a Jerusalem yeshivah, learned of Tamar's plight...
...The campaign was now 14 hours old...
...Tempestuous winds were unleashed with all their fury and the Chicago-bound plane found itself literally up in the air, circling helplessly and waiting for landing clearance...
...Then their hot line rang...
...The yeshivah students had now arranged every last meticulous detail except one: a donor liver...
...The American consulate was closed...
...The incredulous hospital staff were suitably impressed with the importance and immediacy of the situation...
...Now he put his learning to prodigious use...
...As of this writing, 14 months after the operation, Tamar's condition is stable but still critical...
...Once the donor organ has been recovered, time is the most important factor in assuring a good allograft...
...They decided to use the liver for Tamar...
...Simcha felt it would be wise to stop at Tel Hashomer Hospital on the way to Tel Aviv to make sure that Tamar was ready for the trip...
...Desperately they decided to begin a last-minute attempt to arrange for a transplant...
...America was on the horn saying that a philanthropist was willing to guarantee the balance of the $100,000 and that an invitation from the hospital would be arriving shortly...
...For many of them we can't do a thing...
...Divine intervention...
...She had also undergone a hair-raising operation in an attempt to save the damaged liver with which she was born, but this surgery had only been a stop-gap measure...
...Rabbi Porush called the American consulate, identified himself and told the officer in charge to do everything possible to expedite the issuance of visas for this emergency...
...SlMCHA'S BROTHER, AARON, CAME UP with the ingenious idea of turning Tamar's financial crises into a public relations coup for someone in desperate need of image revival...
...Simcha quickly apprised them that a visa was the key to the exit and the key was almost in hand...
...The next stop was Ben Gurion Airport...
...Trained in neither crisis management, fund-raising nor medical techniques, Simcha was schoqled in the value of human life...
...We have faith," the Amnons told him, effectively ending the conversation...
...Their pale and fragile daughter finally broke down the Amnon's resistance...
...Gusts over the Windy City whipped up to gale force and a snowstorm over Lake Michigan turned due west...
...Without a second thought for his attire, the vice-consul, with the committee at his heels, raced to the embassy to personally issue the visas for the Amnons...
...There is simply no cure known to science...
...A delegation was immediately dispatched to Kupat Gholim's administrative office...
...Resigned to the inevitable, the Amnons could only look on miserably as Tamar's life ebbed away...
...We can save her...
...As Tamar was being discharged from the hospital, another member of the crisis committee was securing airline tickets from a travel agent that he had awakened in the middle of the night...
...As it happened, the vice-consul had never issued a visa before...
...But as soon as he learned that the visa was not for an American citizen, he tried to retrieve the phone number he had recklessly revealed...
...But the vengeful masses still weren't satisfied and wished for greater calamity to befall the infamous hotelier...
...Simcha explained that there was no time for formalities or ceremonies...
...Even if the plane were able to land within the next two hours, the ambulance might experience difficulty traveling through the driving snowstorm...
...Tamar's Race roRLife HANOCH TELLER When Tamar Amnon's parents came to Israel from South Yemen approximately 35 years ago, they brought nothing with them but their family and their faith, a faith strong enough to withstand many trials...
...Indeed, all it said was that if any delays—direct or indirect— could be traced to him which would prevent Tamar Amnon from boarding the next U.S.-bound plane, not only would his State Department career come to an abrupt demise, but he would be held liable for complicity in the death of the child...
...A lead developed when someone discovered that Knesset member Menachem Porush of the Agudat Yisrael party had pull with American bureaucrats...
...Operation Save-a-Life was a success...
...He invited the boys up to his apartment where he greeted them in his pajamas...
...Alas, it was Sunday...
...Representatives were then dispatched to each institution to appoint someone to direct the local appeal...
...Getting a parliamentarian out of a Knesset session just before a vote was no facile endeavor, but minor details like that were unimportant when it was a matter of life and death...
...Ever since she had sneered, "Only litde people pay taxes," the media was determined to present her as an iniquitous witch...
...After several days it was called off because, the family concluded, the amount was simply unattainable...
...The vice-consul, obviously laboring under the misunderstanding that his foreign service obligations ended when the office closed, did not want to hear about—let alone be disturbed for— emergencies...
...It was four o'clock in the afternoon...
...This, together with $100,000 deposited in the hospital's account, would enable Children's Hospital's chief surgeon to authorize the emergency operation for little Tamar...
...Four hours after Tamar landed in New York, she was admitted to Wyler Children's Hospital...
...she urgendy needed a liver transplant but she was too young to survive that delicate procedure...
...But providence had other plans...
...The marine was unconvinced...
...At the same time, another delegation visited Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the Shas party, to influence the Shas candidates to pressure Kupat Cholim...
...Then something happened...
...Once the visa was issued they didn't want to wait until the hospital went through releasing procedures...
...Do you see these children, all of them literally at death's door...
...Hundreds of boys and girls were calling home, pleading with their parents to help save Tamar Amnon's life...
...He and the two astute yeshivah students pored over the complicated State Department manual and, within a few minutes, visas and other papers were being signed left and right as documents were stamped with dizzying abandon...
...But the venerable sick fund was sick of funding operations abroad and would not even give an attentive ear...
...Simcha called home base and told them somehow to delay the plane and then call New York headquarters to activate any influence they could—from the Secretary of State on down—with the Tel Aviv embassy...
...He wished the hospital officials a speedy I'hitraot and zoomed off to the American embassy in Tel Aviv...
...Eight hours into the campaign two committee members were waiting for Tamar's doctors to write a letter describing the prognosis and the urgency of the situation...
...There was a greater chance of success at Wyler Children's Hospital in Chicago...
...When a liver becomes available for a transplant the information is immediately entered into a computer network where the donor organ is matched to a recipient...
...High-level yeshivah delegations contacted well-known charity fund-raisers to procure lists of wealthy patrons...
...Simcha had a distinctly different approach and pressed his case...
...The Israeli bureau chief drew up a list of every yeshivah in the Jerusalem area...
...Seconds later Simcha and his colleagues were en route to the American consulate...
...They spent their time at Tamar's bedside at Tel Hashomer Hospital...
...Something new stirred in the hearts of the Amnons...
...Tamar had a high bilirubin, elevated liver function tests, malnutrition and ascites...
...Within an hour after hearing of Tamar's plight, Simcha had mobilized his entire yeshivah for the Save-a-Life campaign...
...Within the next few hours airline tickets, visaSj Israeli passports and an army permit for Tamar's father to travel would have to be secured, a doctor to accompany Tamar on the flight would have to be located, and Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh would have to request that Tel Hashomer Hospital release Tamar...
...Her parents could not believe their misfortune, nor could they— or did they—believe the doctors who continued to press for an immediate transplant...
...Abramowitz's voice dropped to a whisper, "there is a chance...
...Wyler's pediatric surgical center braced to operate on a baby boy from Detroit...
...This faith, however, did not extend to the wonders of modern medicine...
...Within six hours Jerusalem's telephone access to the overseas communications satellite was overloaded...
...Tamar's congenital defect was irreparable...
...Back in Jerusalem a fund-raising coordinator discovered a clause in Kupat Cholim (Israel's medical insurance) literature stating that if an operation could not be performed in Israel, Kupat Cholim would underwrite up to $100,000 of its cost...
...But even with this political stew brewing, the campaigners for Tamar realized they could not bank on Kupat Cholim for immediate cash...
...He simply told the caller that such a visa could only be processed through the American embassy in Tel Aviv...
...Simcha dashed out of the Jerusalem headquarters to personally acquire visas for the Amnon family...
Vol. 16 • August 1991 • No. 4
