Battle Royale: Salomon vs Coronavirus

okay hello everybody good evening it's great to be back my name is Yakov Solomon and it's great to be back and what I mean by that is it's great to be back among the living and it's great to be healthy thank God and it's great to be back on H comm I spent a lot of years on H comm about a dozen years or so with a lot of a few hundred Solomon says blog some of you may remember them and lots of articles so I want to thank the editors Coopersmith's Roger Simmons and Jack Allah for bringing me back they invited me a few weeks ago to tell my story is very exciting for me because it's something that I have wanted to do so here I am doing it and let me tell you something about myself basically I'm thinking about how to introduce myself to those of you who don't know me I'm I'm a family guy I'm a family guy I've been married many many years to a great wife we have eight married children I'm married or with kids and they're terrific and wonderful and I consider that to be a very important part of my life maybe the most important part of my life in addition to that I speak a little bit and I write and I'm a psychotherapist in private practice I live in Jackson New Jersey just so you know who I am a little bit and over the next 30 minutes or so that's all I have I'm gonna be sharing my story and I'm gonna be telling you about five different lessons I learned from this story now that divide up 30 minutes to tell all this is not so simple and I basically had the two possibilities I could either concentrate on the story and what happened to me or I could concentrate on what I think I learned from it and that's not an easy decision to make let me tell you excuse me because most people really I think are more interested in coming to the story tell me what happened because what I thought you were curious like to find out about things and the stories the matter of the people especially but fact is that I think it's a little more important the try to see what I gain from it and maybe you - as well maybe not in the same way so you'll be hearing something about it I will set the stage and give you an idea of what it is and what happened to me but I think I'm gonna spend most of the time telling you about what I think I learned from it I know people say give the audience what they want I'm not really gonna do that if what you want is all the gory details they'll have to catch me some other time but I'm gonna give you some of them and then set the stage for what I think I learned at space of what we're doing here tonight it all started as best as I can recall on March 15th and how did it start it started in a in a very undefined way a lot of people I found out who are not from the New York area didn't know a lot of people who had covert 19 I spoke to people about 10 different places different countries even in Israel I mean you didn't even meet that many people who even had it but over here this was really happening as you know happening in New York New Jersey in California happening a lot in the urban areas and sure enough I started feeling I didn't really know what it was at that time and it was kind of like an undefined uneasy disquieting kind of feeling and they decided think my temperature took my temperature and sure enough 101 said I'm coming down with something but I didn't know exactly what it was at the time it didn't take long let me tell you within the next day or so I started to feel incredibly weak it's the best way I could describe it I was just weak I was washed out I felt as I called it feeble frail flimsy and fragile and I didn't know what it was I had never experienced that kind of weakness in my life before I very quickly had no appetite at all couldn't eat anything didn't want to eat anything couldn't imagine eating anything who couldn't imagine ever wanting to eat anything that's that's how bad that was I took tylenol took a lot of Tylenol tried to stay within the limits it was hard because I got a little bit relief from the terminal at least the fever came down but after a while I saw that that really was doing it wasn't enough and after a few days I was getting more symptoms lots of kills lots of chattering teeth not very pretty my wife was home with me and didn't quite know what to do when she was trying really her best to try to figure it out give me some comfort I had strange symptoms nightmares lots of nightmares very strange dreams vivid extremely vivid and I wasn't even sleeping that well but as soon as I fell asleep somehow I felt like I was entering a different universe like a an outer limits or a Twilight Zone if you remember that that's what it was like I had terrible night sweats you should excuse me terrible sweats woke up when in soaking just you knows my whole body when the fever and everything and it had a terrible odor even I'm embarrassed to tell you but it's a very personal story I'm telling you basically everything and a big part of it had an extremely dry mouth one of the worst nights I had maybe in my life was when I had one night during the 26th day bout that my mouth was so dry I didn't sleep the entire night I just sat up in bed and I drank a drank and I had had to drink basically every minute just about every minute it was unbelievable no matter how much I drank it wasn't gonna do it for me no matter how much I put into me I had to pick again another 60 seconds later it was bad and then the breathing problems started thank God they were not terrible and I must say that I was not the worst case you've ever heard I never went to the hospital thank God I never went to the hospital but according to my wife what she tells me she said I would wake up every morning and say to her I need to go to the hospital and that's not me because I stay away from that but it was so bad then the breathing started and started to worry me and I got anxiety from it etc so there I was every day week after week there was zero change from one day to the next one of the worst nights I had in the worst night of my life was when I got up but at 3 a.m. and felt like I couldn't breathe at all and they call that Sala marvellous local ambulance service and they came over and they they reassured me if they said him my numbers were good my oxygen level was good and and was okay was on the border but and they were not taking me to the hospital I thought I was going to the hospital and I must tell you as I knew many people when you go there many did not come back so that's the last thing that I wanted so that night was all night and that was 3 a.m. started at 3 a.m. and they gave me a oxygen meter to put on like a pulse on my finger and just watched it long liked and watching the numbers those meters are wonderful if you're not OCD if you're OCD they're not so good thank God I'm not OCD so I was able to use it and monitor it and see my numbers and see that I was still within range and it was ok and a big help during that time by the way was they had two doctors at my call I was able to speak with them when I needed to they called me even dr. Jonathan Cohen dr. Jeffery title BAM fabulous people in the medical profession and they guided me through and did a lot of reassurance etcetera that's a point that the title one put me on the hydroxychloroquine and they I'm not even sure if it helped I took it for seven days it's a lot of big controversy I don't know if it helped but there was and I took it I don't know if it made a difference at all or not originally I had taken this from Ison which was my go-to medicine took a before I took the high at the hydroxy but I don't know what helped the team it seemed like nothing was helping I was so weak I thought that I would just fade away and I didn't know how anybody could get any more weak and and still be alive especially since I was not eating at some point I had a line put in intravenous just to get fluids in for a while because I wasn't eating drinking was very difficult you know it's the heart its heart it over this I must tell you I have not been over this in a while and and I remember one day my wife was trying to get me to eat a banana and I and I just could because I was just so we gonna do I needed to eat but I was just a weak and and I remember telling her I can't I can't eat the banana I can't even hold the banana I really couldn't do anything myself I couldn't even hold the banana and I bananas not that heavy but it was too much for me so there it was and it just went they every day every day and I stayed out of the hospital and I thought I wouldn't make it in many points and thank God after about the 23 24 days it started to lift by 26 days or more so I felt like it was really getting better and all the symptoms faded away I never lost my sense of smell or taste etcetera it just came back after a trip to hell that's basically what was I think that's aptly said and what did I learn so I put it down to five things they're probably on more I hope that you can relate to some of it they're not any any anything brilliant and there's nothing here that's something you've never heard before maybe they're just reminders but to me they're important and they're all reminders so I'll give you a sense of the of the different things that I that I learned from this extraordinary experience one that I hope I never have to face again but one in which I do feel I got a tremendous amount of knowledge and growth from this experience first thing I want to tell you is that I learned about independence you know I considered myself a pretty independent guy and I always put it at a premium it's important to be independent independent is Independence's compared to strength you're not strong if you're not independent and you have to be independent but the problem is that we often I think mistake pride mistake pride for independence it's a Mara it comes a matter of pride when you don't want to lean on someone you don't want to depend on someone else but what I learned is that being dependent is not such a bad thing if being independent is not what it's trumped up to be and that's not a political statement we have a Declaration of Independence I'd like to make a declaration of dependence believe me I was so dependent during those 3 to 4 weeks could do almost nothing myself and my wife was a miracle worker and she did everything for me and I was totally reliant on her and that as you won't know is not a very good feeling but I learned from it that it's okay maybe it's not even that it's okay but maybe that it's necessary and it's even important people say if you want something done right do it yourself not true or certainly not always true sometimes it's done right when it's done by someone else and if someone else can do it for you and do it better for you it's pretty important and it's a good thing you have to let other people help you you have to allow people to to do for you it's good for them to be able to give and it's good for you the Torah tells us low tokyo's Adam Levada it's not good for a person to be alone and it's not only to be out of life partner and it's not only to understand that you need company but being dependent on someone humbles you a little bit and it puts you in a place where you more connected to people because there's a give-and-take it's not only one way so I think it's important and what I learned is that I have to get a lot more comfortable with relying enough people and not feel like I've got to do everything myself and if I don't it'll it won't be good or I'll just never get done not so that's lesson number one for me dependence not always and not completely but certainly a lot more than I was used to that's number one number two is quite personal and a little difficult to talk about maybe the most difficult to talk about but I can say that the thought of dying is probably in everyone's mind we don't we don't speak about that we don't speak about dying we don't speak about our thoughts about dying or our fears about dying we don't maybe because it's bad luck or maybe because it's ioan hora evil omen or maybe because it's too painful or too confusing or just too difficult to really talk about it and we don't even like to think about it too much that's how scared we basically are but the fact is that everybody thinks about death and everybody has a certain fear I imagine and then the times that I would think about it in the past I would have this macho kind of feeling like I'm not really afraid of dying and I took it as kind of a logical thing like there's nothing to be afraid of first of all in case you haven't noticed everyone dies we all die this is a temporary existence and a temporary world we don't like to face that we like to go through life pretending that this is it we like to go through life feeling like you know we have nothing else so you know it's never gonna happen so we're in total denial but the fact is that we all die and it's probably healthy to think about it and to talk about it and our sages tell us and then in the Talmud they tell us that it's a good thing it's a good thing to think about it because it kind of keeps us in check because when you think about the fact that we're really mortal that puts a different spin on things right it puts a little different perspective so this is not something that is bad or something that is something that we need to stay away from of course the fact that it's not bad doesn't mean it's not said that this said then we miss our loved ones we have so many people who unfortunately died during this this called the 19 from my neighborhood alone here in Lakewood and Jackson New Jersey we lost 60 70 or 80 prime prime citizens and people of community leaders and great rabbis and wonderful and then on all the other neighborhoods and it's very very sad of course of course it is but I had myself talked into myself that aren't really I'm not really afraid of it is something that happens and you know it's not something we want and it's not something that were comfortable with but it's nothing really to be afraid of well guess what I discovered how wrong I was boy was I scared boy was I scared and it was a shock to me I was just so scared I just didn't want to let go have a nice life and a lot of great people around me and wonderful things and big plans and I just didn't want to go and I was I was afraid that I would and the fear was not only painful but it was surprising so that was an example of something that I thought I knew but I didn't know the weakness was so dominant so pronounced and the breathing issues even though they were not dreadful you never put me in the hospital but they were enough me to say what happens if I can't breathe and that's not a feeling that that I want to go back to so that was a big lesson to me because I don't think that it's good to be afraid of death I don't think so I think it's normal I think it's natural I don't think it's a good thing I think fear should be reserved for God we should be have we have fear of God and maybe a little fear of our parents you know that's what the Torah tells us you should have that also but fears in general are not great but not healthy they put us in a bad place they get in the way and to the extent that I can still work on it and become less fearful that's a good thing because I didn't think I had to work on it I thought I was fine and I thought that was just not a part of me and I was wrong I was really wrong and it was quite a revelation so to me that's a great lesson face your fears don't be a denier and then you can work on them if you're not aware of them you will never work on it number two number three number three was a little surprising but a little similar to number two in that something that I thought I had already attained and in fact yes I know and that is the word betta comb and that is trust and belief and and reliance on God I thought I had betta phone I thought I was very very clear about me hmm thought is clear about my trust in God am i understanding that he runs the world and he runs everything about it excuse me and every part of my life this little thing of my throat now that I'm he's in charge of that also put the frog in my throat cetera and I try to live that way but I found that when I was totally helpless and sometimes hopeless I found that I had to go there I was forced to put all my trust in him and I found myself speaking to him and speaking more to him and trying to develop a relationship with him you know it's very difficult to trust someone that you don't know very difficult to trust someone that you don't have a relationship with now the famous expression is that you know sorry you don't trust a a used-car salesman right well you don't have a relationship with use car salesman so if you don't know him so and you think he has ulterior motives it's hard to trust them right and it's the same with many people until you get to know someone until you have a real relationship with someone you can't fully put your trust in that person or even that being having a beat to hone it is not yes or no now you go to a doctor's office and it gives you those forms to fill out and there are reams and reams of papers and questions have you ever suffered from this and your spleen and your kidneys and and their every every possible malady everything possible so when you check it off usually it's a yes or no have you ever had this you ever had that to be a mad Arthur whatever you did diabetes that said yes or no yes or no this condition of that condition but be to Holmes I like that it's the continuum it's something that constantly needs to be work on you need to ask yourself over and over again how much am I really trusting in a sham how much is God in my life how much do I think that that they might my health is only to do with how how well I eat and how much I exercise and how much of my living is only a much to do with how brilliant I am and what a great decisions I made and how are the opportunities just you know worked out for me etc etc we have to understand that God is really pulling the strings and if you didn't see that after kovat 19 and that he was just there and just doing everything and making all of us totally clueless totally held you know one day's news is the next day is old news and it the the most brilliant minds in the world were rendered completely useless and helpless if you can see that that God is really running the world then you know we need to brush up and we need to go back and ask ourselves again how much do we really believe in that's by the time I stopped doing and I understood that it needs constant monitoring I'm monitoring my oxygen level but my pulse in that then that with my finger in my a meter but I need to monitor it my belief system and it need to nourish it needs constant watering and constant nourishment in order to be able to help it grow they in the in tell him in the songs 55 it says high flakes out - Yahveh cast your troubles upon God who you call caleca and he will sustain you so I heard a great great example of how to really understand that you're driving down the road and spinning nicely beautiful and all's going well and then you see there at a bus stop see friend of yours and he's waiting at the bus stop and he's got this huge huge box on his back just you know carrying it and you see them and you pull over you say hey no love it come in come into my car you know I see countless every package is room in the back say he goes into the back seat and it's perfect now you're driving along and as he driving along you look in the rearview mirror when you look in the mirror you're looking behind you you see to your amazement that God is sitting there with the package still on his back and you say to him doing what are you doing I'm driving you anyway put the package down on the seat next to you you don't have to carry it and the parable is so beautiful God's carrying us anyway and he's carrying us anyway you might as well put the package down we were in his car he's taking us for the ride and we have to take all of our troubles and all of our worries and say we have to trust God he knows what he's doing it's not easy to do especially when we're suffering and so many people suffer in so many different ways it's really hard to do but if you believe that he's really driving that car you can put the package down be tough : really trusting in I am trusting in God is really the answer to all of your worry problems people that have great trust don't really worry it's a fantastic beautiful way to solve one of life's biggest problems that's number three number four I began to realize as I was recovering even a little bit before that that one of the most difficult things for me because I had a difficult recovery I didn't speak much about that but I had what I thought was something like post-traumatic stress disorder because I was very very anxious even as I was getting better and sleepless sleepless nights very jittery walking around nervous anxious maybe it's coming back maybe I'm not really better lots of different worries etc but I found that a lot of it was being fueled by negative stimulation and I think you know exactly what I'm talking about the media the websites the magazines everything you saw was negative and it seeps into your system it grabs a hold of you and it doesn't let go and before you know it it is destroying you and I pulled out I stopped reading all the negative articles and I stopped reading all the obituaries and those habitual very sad and very painful and I felt myself suffering through them some people who I knew and people who I didn't and just reading about the families and the articles you know what it was too much for me I had to get away from it and I put that of all the negative stimulation and they they the problem is is that what we're immersed in the news so much of us but all of it is negative almost all of this negative well we have this delusion we think that that information or knowledge is power and the more we know the more in control it's funny it's counterfeit we're not merely in power we're not really in control if we know more and this really proved it because when we thought we knew something a day later we found that it wasn't true how many times we heard about the predictions and then pictures was off and the hospitals are gonna be packed and and and we're not gonna have enough ventilators and there's gonna be a second surge and it's going to be and the surface is a bit and the gloves are important and then everything changes everything changes all the time folks it's all negative and it's unhealthy don't fall prey to what they're giving you and what they're feeding you it's hard to pull out because you think I just have to know I just have to know we're almost addicted to the news and finding out things but it's not healthy you're much better off and I found out personally I was much better off when I stopped I thought the Tuck I felt that go on to go back like an addict a little bit but I stayed away and I got better from it and the more I stayed away the better I got and number five and number five is really simple you see it's really simple because it's something that I do all the time and that I preach all the time but until they feel up myself you don't really know that it's there and that is the power of talking just talking it's so important I tell people all the time if you have a fear you need to talk about it if you're mourning you need to talk about it but when it comes down to it and you see the healing power of speaking you realize that this is not just you know a good idea this can make the difference I found myself looking for people to talk to as I was getting better and I found myself hoping that something would asked me Oh tell me your story like I'm doing so therapeutic for me thank you the story so oh he asked me oh and tell me more d-does and then he would ask me questions and I would be so grateful and appreciate they've always asked me questions because he's giving me time to talk about it because it's letting the pus out we need to get the pus out everybody understood this everybody knows it when it comes down to it somehow were reluctant to do it we don't realize how powerful it really is but you need to push that out I grew up in the house of Holocaust survivors my father a blessed memory he never spoke about his experiences in six different concentration camps he never spoke about it all the years I don't think it was healthy but he was trying to protect us I understand that but once a week he got together in Riverside part in the West Side Manhattan and he had a huddle with other survivors this was in the 60s and the war was only like 20-something years old over and he used to huddle with his Holocaust survivors friends and they used to talk and that's where the pus came math and that was the therapy and this went on for years like that it was a private little group that was a therapy group really and I realize how important that is and if things are bothering you need to find someone to talk to need to get it out and talk about it as much as you have to and the more you do the better you will feel five different things that I learned that a terrible terrible experience and I thank God every day am I thank you more more and more and it's the life has never been more beautiful than it is now but I learned about independence how it's not as great as it seems dependence is fine I learned about my fear of death it's a good thing good to work on it it's not a good thing to be afraid but it's good to know about it because then you'll work on it and I learned about be tough on how to trust in God and the way that you really shouldn't how to work on it at all times and I learned to stay away from all the negatives and stop with the news and stop at the websites that are just feeding us every every doomsday scenario and the value of talking my time over here is up I was gonna about was about to say my time is up and I don't want to say that so my time over here is up I hope you gain something from this you know the our sages tell us that where we learn a lot and even the the trials and tribulations that God gives us are extremely valuable and they're given to us actually with love from my feminine with love from God at the same time we're not allowed to ask for them we're not a lot of hope that we get these trials so it's a funny kind of dual situation we certainly don't want them but once you have them we use it as an opportunity for growth and as I said in that trailer virus said the question really will be not so much what the pandemic did to us but what this pandemic did for us I'm Jakob Salomon I thank you for listening I hope you stay healthy I hope you stay well I hope you don't have to face any trials and tribulations I hope the world gets to be normal again but in a better place with each person taking his own personal message from what happened for whatever you went through or whether you heard about people went through whatever that was and you use that as a springboard to be able to launch a Vista of growth and be able to come closer to God in every which way possible we should see the building of the temple the new temple speedily and in our days thank you and good night there is time questions by the way yes we can even though we are we are limited to the 30 minutes we can go ten minutes or so for questions if any of you has and you can ask personal things this is your time to do it then if you write it in on Facebook or on YouTube whichever it may be you can put those questions in and now I'll see them on the screen and I'll try to I'll try to dodge them like most people do no I'll try to answer them as to the best of my ability if there are no questions that's also okay and well way to get some Minnesota and see see what people come up with and see how we should proceed and move on you can ask me about the things that I learned the things that I should have learned you can comment about maybe things you've heard about the things that you've learned you could ask me about my personal experience a little bit more about some of the details of what I a little bit rushed through as I told you that I would and see what comes up or have I left you totally speechless so that there's nothing to else to say or else to talk about risk that's okay either way I also want to thank Todd Rosenblatt who is our coordinator here and this is such a fabulous job but still all together he's watching me by the way in this zoom unlike other other zooms I don't see anybody I don't know how many people are out there but I don't see anybody so I hope that you see me if not I think you would have told me so thank you to Todd and I guess if there are I don't know somebody said thank you okay oh I think that was Cod saying thank you so I say thank you and I wish you a good night you