Enter My Room

Please enter quietly. We have six steps to go together.

Take the chair beside the bed. Stay with me for a little while.

Ninth floor. Memorial Sloan Kettering.

A hospital bed sits in the middle of the room. Beside it stands an IV pole, its tubes running into my body. Across from us, daylight enters through a large window overlooking Manhattan.

A small table stands nearby. And only a few steps from the bed is the bathroom.

Nothing remarkable.

Until you try to reach it.

Ninth Floor

I would live in that room for twenty-three days in May 2024. By then I already knew hospitals. But this was different.

From May 7 through May 12, my body underwent the conditioning regimen for an autologous bone marrow transplant. High-dose chemotherapy and immunotherapy entered me every day—two treatments in the morning and one at night. Eighteen infusions in six days.

The purpose was almost frightening in its precision. Before the new marrow could take root, medicine had to destroy what remained of the old environment. The treatments attacked malignant cells, but the inevitable casualty was the marrow itself.

For six days, the body was being emptied.

Then came the seventh day. May 13.

The transplant itself was almost visually anticlimactic. There was no surgery. No dramatic operating room. My own previously collected stem cells were taken out of frozen storage and returned to me through the central line like an ordinary transfusion carrying an extraordinary future.

And then came the waiting. The counts fell. The immune system disappeared. The doctors call the lowest point the nadir.

I learned that the word low is inadequate.

At the nadir, raising your head can require planning. Sitting upright can feel like an athletic event. The body has almost no strength left for even the smallest movement. In those days, even swallowing water could become a negotiation.

By Day 14, I had not eaten for three days. Water came in tiny sips. My mouth hurt. My stomach resisted. Nausea hovered close enough that every movement had to be measured before it was attempted.

The bed had become the geography of my life.

Head here. Pillow there. Blanket. IV line. Port. Call button. Window. And six or seven steps away, the bathroom.

Close enough to see. Far enough to feel unreachable.

Six Steps

That morning, lying in bed, I felt something almost insignificant. A slight movement inside my abdomen. Nothing dramatic. But after days in which the body seemed to have forgotten many of its ordinary functions, I recognized it.

My bowels were beginning to move. The doctors had been waiting for this. So had I. Healthy people rarely celebrate such news. Illness changes the hierarchy of miracles.

I pressed the button that raised the electric bed. The mattress slowly lifted behind me. My torso bent forward. Even that hurt.

I stopped. Breathed. Waited.

I moved one leg toward the edge. Lowered it. Waited. A few minutes later, the other leg followed.

Stay where you are. Don’t help me yet. I need to know whether I can do this.

Now I was sitting.

That was all.

Sitting.

My head began to ache. Nausea rose. My heart rate quickened. So I remained there for four or five minutes, trying to gather enough strength for the next event.

Standing.

I looked upward.

There are prayers that begin with words. There are others that begin with a human being simply trying to get off a mattress.

I gripped the rolling IV pole. One hand first. Then I pushed. My body rose.

For a moment I was upright. I did not know how long I could remain that way. So I placed my second hand on the pole.

The wheels beneath it became my legs before my legs were ready to become themselves again.

I breathed heavily.

You can see it from your chair. It looks close, doesn’t it?

I took the first. Then another. Each step required a decision.

One. Pause. Two. Breathe. Three.

Four. Five. The doorway.

I entered.

With care, holding the IV pole for balance, I lowered my clothing and eased myself onto the toilet.

And then I sat.

Twenty minutes.

For the smallest evidence that the body had remembered one of its jobs.

I remember thinking:

All of that for this?

Then almost immediately:

Yes.

All of that for this.

Because this was not this. This was movement. This was function.

This was a body that had been chemically battered, emptied, transplanted, medicated, starved, monitored, weakened—and somewhere inside it, a system had begun working again.

A very small door had opened.

And through it came hope.

The Smallest Miracle

When it was over, I had to make the journey back.

I pulled myself upward with both hands on the IV pole and waited until the room stopped shifting around me.

Then the sink. I leaned my body toward its edge for support. One hand washed. Then the other. Slowly.

Nothing in my life had prepared me to understand the magnificence of washing two hands while standing upright.

Then I turned.

The bed waited six steps away.

I began moving backward into the room. One step. Pause. Another. My breathing became louder.

By the time I reached the bed, I had almost nothing left.

I turned carefully. Sat. And collapsed backward onto the mattress.

My chest rose and fell. I closed my eyes. I could feel my heart beating from the effort.

And then I smiled.

Six steps there. Six steps back. A few minutes in a bathroom.

Most of my life, I had crossed distances like that without recording them in memory.

Now twelve steps felt like an expedition.

Now you understand why six steps mattered.

And the almost invisible bodily function that had brought me there felt like news from Heaven.

Then I remembered the blessing.

Face to Face

I had known Asher Yatzar for years. It is the blessing a Jew says after the body performs one of its most ordinary functions.

But that morning on the ninth floor, I did not recite Asher Yatzar.

I met it.

I closed my eyes.

And spoke to the Ribono Shel Olam.

Not toward Him.

To Him.

Face to face.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם

Baruch Atah Hashem, Eloheinu Melech ha-olam.

Blessed are You, Hashem, our Hashem, King of the universe.

You.

The One who had been in this room before I entered it. The One who had watched every infusion descend through the tubing. The One who had remained when my white blood cells disappeared and my strength followed them.

אֲשֶׁר יָצַר אֶת הָאָדָם בְּחָכְמָה

Who formed the human being with wisdom.

With wisdom.

I had spent fourteen days watching physicians, nurses, pharmacists and machines measure the body with extraordinary precision.

And now the blessing reminded me that precision existed before medicine learned how to measure it.

וּבָרָא בוֹ נְקָבִים נְקָבִים, חֲלוּלִים חֲלוּלִים

And created within him openings upon openings, cavities upon cavities.

For most of my life, those words had been anatomy.

That morning they were autobiography.

Openings. Passages. Systems.

Things that must open. Things that must close. Things whose quiet cooperation makes it possible for a man to lie in a hospital bed and still call himself alive.

גָּלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לִפְנֵי כִסֵּא כְבוֹדֶךָ

It is revealed and known before Your Throne of Glory.

Known.

Before I knew. Before the doctors knew. Before the blood tests returned. Before my frightened mind could understand what was happening inside me.

Known to You.

שֶׁאִם יִסָּתֵם אֶחָד מֵהֶם, אוֹ אִם יִפָּתֵחַ אֶחָד מֵהֶם

That if one of them were to become blocked, or one of them were to open when it should not—

I stopped.

Those words no longer belonged to a siddur.

They belonged to the room. They belonged to the bathroom six steps away. They belonged to the tiny movement that had gotten me out of bed.

אִי אֶפְשָׁר לְהִתְקַיֵּם אֲפִילוּ שָׁעָה אֶחָת

It would be impossible to continue existing even for one moment.

I had said that sentence countless times.

Now I understood why a person could spend an entire life saying it and still not understand it until one ordinary bodily function became uncertain.

We imagine that miracles announce themselves.

A sea splits. A disease disappears. A child is born.

But sometimes the miracle is much quieter.

Something opens. Something closes. Something moves.

And because it does, you remain here.

On the ninth floor, I no longer needed the explanation.

I had just walked through it.

Then came the final words.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה׳, רוֹפֵא כָל בָּשָׂר וּמַפְלִיא לַעֲשׂוֹת

Blessed are You, Hashem, Who heals all flesh and acts wondrously.

Umafli la’asot.

Who does wonders.

I lay there breathing heavily. Exhausted from going to the bathroom. Grateful beyond language.

And suddenly I understood something about that hospital room.

Eighteen treatments. The transplant. Blood counts falling to zero. Doctors rushing in. Stem cells beginning to engraft.

But perhaps the room had another curriculum.

A sip of water. Sitting upright. A leg touching the floor. Standing. Six steps. A functioning body. A blessing.

For twenty-three days, that room taught me to reduce life until nothing ordinary remained.

The bathroom had been six steps away.

I had thought I was trying to reach it.

I understand differently now.

I was being taught how far six steps can take a human being.

I hope you never need a room like mine to understand Asher Yatzar.

But some rooms teach magnificently.

Take the lesson with you.

I am tired now. I need to sleep.

Thank you for visiting.