Save One Life

"If you save one life

it is as if you have saved

the entire world." 

- The Talmud

SAVE ONE LIFE

calligraphed on marbled paper by Barbara Klaristenfeld

Beautiful personal gifts I commissioned for the two UCLA surgeons (directors of Head and Neck [Dr. Hoover] and also Neurosurgery [Donald Becker, MD]) who saved the life of my husband in June 1988.

During a 14 hour surgery, the surgeons removed the initial metastatic Esthesio Neuroblastoma, and made new brain linings for Marcel, z"l, in the two back to back brain surgeries.
(That first brain lining split open the next day and there was another brain surgery.  Amazingly, the later Cedars Sinai Orthopedic Spinal surgeon, Patrick Johnson, revealed that when he was a resident he was in on the first UCLA surgery.)

Marcel was comatose at UCLA for the next three months, and then went back to work for the next 11 years in Pulmonary Medicine, and Critical Care, as Professor of Medicine at UCLA, and ICU director at Sepulveda VA. Marcel retired and six years later was able to attend his daughter's wedding.


I hired Barbara Klaristenfeld, dear friend and calligrapher, to create gifts for the two surgeons.
Years later, Dr. Hoover sent to me a photo of the art that continues to hang in his recent office in Kansas.

It was friends and family who kept me alive, as Caregiver Angel Warrior. 

I am eternally grateful for all their years of loving support.

Marcel,z"l, died January 17, 2006.
 - Joy Krauthammer

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