Writing during wartime — I don’t know how I did it, but I did it, it was hard

I finished it!

I only thought it would take a year, year and a half tops, to write my book about kidney failure when transplant is not a possibility. I was so driven to try and help other people facing kidney failure by letting them know there is a third alternative to hemodialysis and transplant. And I hoped that my story about how I got here — how I got sick slowly and then suddenly — would uncover the many unseen ways a healthcare system can fail us, especially those of us who have been wounded by the ones who were supposed to care for us. And that that uncovering would inspire both patients and doctors to overcome those barriers. I really thought that that drive would make the writing flow.

But then the war came.

I think to write a memoir like this you have to believe that your experience, your suffering, is the most important thing in the world. At least when you’re sitting in front of the blank page, you have to believe that your story has more to say to the world than any other story. Unless you really believe that, you just can’t push through all the tears that come flooding out when you revisit traumatic experiences.

And I cried so much while writing the book. I needed those tears to write. I don’t know what people in the Aroma cafe I wrote so much of it in thought when they saw the bearded man sitting by the wall with tears streaming down his face, but the best parts got written during those moments.

But then the war came.

And for maybe six months I needed every tear to mourn. For the murdered. For the hostages. For the fallen soldiers.

“How could I write?” I thought. How could I, even for a moment amid so much suffering, think that the suffering of my past was significant?

I stopped writing, I thought of giving up the project altogether.

But eventually I found my way back. I thought of my children and how we’re trying to give them something of a normal childhood experience amid the war and the frantic rushes down the apartment building stairs to the basement miklat. We don’t want them to think their experience, their feelings and fears, are not important because others are suffering so much more. We want them to still know joy. We want our resistance — our resistance to the efforts of Hamas and its allies to break our spirits — to be one of joy. We resist by living. And, for me, that meant resisting by writing again, by becoming again willing to share my struggles — my complicated relationship with the medical world, my quest for meaning and acceptance. And also by sharing about how I chose the home-treatment method of peritoneal dialysis (PD) over hemodialysis in an effort to continue living an active life with my family.

So, the full manuscript — for a limited time — is available as PDF downloads, chapter-by-chapter at academia.edu. I hope you’ll take a look. I’d love to hear your feedback (ama2082@nyu.edu). I hope you find it an inspiring read, one that is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, even in the face of great challenges. One that encourages you to choose life. 

Even when it’s hard.