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alky and I both took off from work to take Dovid to see his pediatrician, Dr. Evan Mark, the next day. Dr. Mark was highly regarded and our children had been patients of his for years. It was immediately clear that something was seriously wrong. He took Dovid’s blood pressure four times, using three different cuffs, because the numbers he was getting were so low, he was sure that the equipment was broken. After a thorough examination he excused himself and walked out of the room. I went outside maybe 60 seconds later to ask the receptionist a question and spotted Dr. Mark, standing in the hallway crying.

My heart dropped to the floor, and it felt like all the air had been sucked out of Dr. Mark’s well-appointed office. Our eyes locked and at first neither of us was able to speak, knowing as we both did that something was terribly wrong with my son.

Finally, Dr. Mark broke the silence.

“Mr. Mintz, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I am very sure that Dovid has…” said Dr. Mark, naming a terrible autoimmune disease, one whose name I prefer not to share even today, three decades later. Dr. Mark didn’t mince words, telling me that the disease was wreaking havoc with Dovid’s nervous system, causing his immune system to attack healthy cells in his body. While some people suffering from this illness present with relatively mild symptoms, it was clear that my son’s case was far more severe.

“Treatment is very complicated and nuanced,” continued Dr. Mark, “and it can be a delicate—”

“Is this potentially fatal?” I asked, cutting Dr. Mark off mid-sentence.

Dr. Mark didn’t answer my question. He also didn’t (or more likely couldn’t) look me in the eye. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and started walking with me back to the examination room, where Dovid and Malky were waiting for us. Dr. Mark hesitated for a minute before opening the door. Finally looking me in the eye, he said, “I don’t know how you’re going to get through this.”

I don’t remember much of what happened after that. Dovid got dressed and I somehow managed to drive us all home safely, a miracle in and of itself, considering the devastating news we had just gotten.

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alky and I were both crushed, although Dovid himself just seemed too tired to really appreciate the fact that things were never going to be the same, and that he might not have long left in This World. He could barely sit up alone, let alone stand, and when he tried, more often than not he fell down on the floor.

We managed to arrange an appointment with a group of seven specialists at one of the top medical centers in Los Angeles to discuss Dovid’s case, but that was five long weeks away. In the interim, we tried some of Dr. Mark’s suggestions, but nothing helped. And since all this happened before the Jewish community had the wonderful referral services it has today, Malky and I were basically on our own, wondering if we would ever have the opportunity to walk Dovid down to the chuppah and see him build a family of his own.

When the day of our appointment finally arrived five weeks later, Dovid was a shadow of his former self. He had lost 15 pounds and 90 percent of his mobility and could barely talk, while walking was completely out of the question. The doctors were completely at a loss. They interpreted Dovid’s lethargy as depression, and their general consensus was that we should put Dovid in a hospital psychiatric ward to live out his remaining days.

As we sat there shell-shocked, a cardiologist, whose name I just don’t remember anymore, gave us the merest glimmer of hope.

“I am wondering if maybe Dr. Helen Sondheim could help you,” he said. “Helen is a neurologist who has done extensive research on the type of autoimmune disease that your son has. If anyone would know of any new treatment protocols that might be of use, it would be her. Let me get you her number and see if she can make time to see you.”

Could Dr. Sondheim be Dovid’s shaliach? I honestly had no idea, but that slim ray of positivity in a sea of absolute darkness became our lifeline, and we grabbed it, hoping it would keep us from drowning.

Not surprisingly, there was a wait of several weeks to get an appointment with Dr. Sondheim. Meanwhile, rattled at the suggestion that we put Dovid in a psych ward, I decided to reach out to the renowned Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski z”l to get his take on the situation. Dr. Twerski was kind enough to make time for a conversation, and he recommended that we take Dovid to see Dr. Arthur Tanenbaum*, a local psychiatrist whom he felt might be able to guide us in the right direction. A wonderful Jewish fellow who, thankfully, was also Los Angeles-based, Dr. Tanenbaum understood us, which was very validating. He spent a significant amount of time examining Dovid and getting him to speak as much as he could, which at that point in time, was no easy task. Thankfully, Dr. Tannenbaum actually had some good news for us.

“Depression is very common in people who are seriously ill, Mr. and Mrs. Mintz, but Dovid isn’t depressed at all,” he explained to me. “In fact, in all the years I have been practicing, I have never met someone as sick as Dovid who wasn’t depressed.”

I can’t even begin to tell you how encouraging Dr. Tanenbaum’s words were. Having been told by an entire panel of top specialists that Dovid needed psychiatric care, hearing that they were wrong gave me hope that maybe things weren’t as bad as they seemed and that maybe one day, we might see some improvement.

But clearly that day hadn’t come yet. Things kept getting harder and harder as we waited for our appointment with Dr. Sondheim. Watching your once-healthy child deteriorating is brutal. Just getting through every day was absolute torture, and the only thing that kept us going was our faith that maybe Dr. Sondheim might be Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s shaliach to lead us to the refuah we so desperately needed.

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still remember that day we went to Dr. Sondheim’s office in Beverly Hills. She spent quite a bit of time examining Dovid, and her face was grim when she called us into her office to discuss her findings.

“Mr. and Mrs. Mintz, you son has one of the worst autoimmune diagnoses that exists, but I think he can beat this if he is willing to work hard enough,” she said.

We weren’t sure what to think. Work hard enough? Dovid could barely sit without falling, let alone stand. How on earth was he going to work at anything?

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” continued Dr. Sondheim, her authoritative voice overriding the negative thoughts screaming loudly in my head. “I’m going to give Dovid medication to regulate his blood pressure, which should help him regain his balance and his ability to stand. Once we have that under control, we’re going to start him on a serious regimen of occupational and physical therapy.”

Dr. Sondheim turned her attention to Dovid, explaining to him that while his condition was incurable, it could be manageable.

“Dovid, I feel that you can get your life back, but you’re going to have to fight with everything you have,” Dr. Sondheim said. “Are you with me?”

Dovid nodded his head imperceptibly, but to be honest, Malky and I had our doubts. Dovid was in bad shape. On top of his lack of mobility, he couldn’t even read or do basic addition anymore. But we were willing to try anything, and thankfully, Dovid was, too. Dr. Sondheim warned us that progress would be agonizingly slow, but that if Dovid gave his all, there was a good chance that in five years, he could be back to himself again.

Even as we waited for the blood pressure meds to do their thing, Dovid started on the therapy regimen that Dr. Sondheim had recommended. While things were really brutal those first few days, Dovid’s therapists, Mike and Abe, quickly became part of our lives. Day by day, they worked with Dovid, stimulating different muscles and nerve groups, training each one to do the simple things that we all take for granted. As the medicine began to work its magic, we started seeing significant results. Two weeks in, we were amazed to see that it seemed as if some of the fog that had enveloped our son for weeks was finally starting to lift.

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ovid himself infused his therapy with heavy doses of emunah and davening, believing that if Hashem created him, he had a responsibility to fight with all his might to recover in order to be able to accomplish his tafkid in This World. He firmly believed that Hakadosh Baruch Hu was going to get him through this ordeal. And He did. Much as we had when Dovid was nine months old, we cheered loudly when he learned how to stand on his own again. On the day that Dovid managed to take ten steps, we threw him a party, complete with balloons, music, and a massive chocolate cake. I’ll never forget that day and the joy in our hearts.

The look on Dr. Sondheim’s face when Dovid came in for his next appointment, four weeks after the first one, was priceless. Dovid had regained nearly 75 percent of his mobility, leaving Dr. Sondheim literally speechless. At one point in time during that appointment, Dr. Sondheim asked Malky and me to step out of the room so that she could speak to Dovid privately, wanting to hear from him in his own words how he had miraculously come so far in such a short amount of time. When I came back into the room, Dr. Sondheim said to me, “Mr. and Mrs. Mintz, tonight I learned what ‘emunah’ means.”

Yes, Dovid had worked hard with Mike and Abe. Yes, he had been taking his blood pressure meds. But Dovid knew in his heart of hearts that it was his bitachon in the Rofei Cholim that was responsible for his rapid progress. After that first month, Mike and Abe told Dovid to keep up with the therapy exercises on his own, but that it was clear he didn’t need their help anymore.

We went back to Dr. Sondheim every month to monitor Dovid’s progress. At the fourth visit, we asked Dr. Sondheim how long he needed to stay on the blood pressure medication.

“Honestly, he is the first person I have ever had this kind of success with, so I can’t tell you for sure,” she said. “Since Dovid’s dosage is five pills a day, let’s try taking one less each week and see what happens.”

On our next visit, Dr. Sondheim told Dovid how wonderful he looked and asked how many pills he was down to each day. She was shocked to hear that the answer was none, and she asked Dovid to come back the next month for a different type of visit.

“I want you to explain to me what it means that G-d is with you,” Dr. Sondheim said. She was still having trouble understanding how it was that Dovid had made so much progress so quickly. “From a medical perspective, your rapid recovery makes no sense, and the idea that your determination was based in the belief that G-d is with you is something I need to understand.”

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aruch Hashem, Dovid’s symptoms never returned, and even as we were able to close the door on this parshah in our lives, we were also inspired to share his story. While of course there are situations where Hakadosh Baruch Hu decides on an outcome that doesn’t include healing, we aren’t the only ones who have also seen how the power of emunah and bitachon can move mountains.

Dina was a woman we met after she became paralyzed from the neck down following the birth of one of her children. I went to visit her in the hospital and I told her about Dovid’s journey, emphasizing that she needs to believe that Hashem can heal her completely, even though the doctors had decided that her situation was hopeless. As we were speaking, Dina’s doctor walked into her room, and Dina asked me to tell the doctor about Dovid and his miraculous recovery.

“You must be talking about Dr. Sondheim,” said Dina’s doctor, who clearly was familiar with her approach to circumstances like these. “Dina,” he said, “I want you to try something. Close your eyes. I want you to trust completely in G-d, and believe completely and unequivocally, that G-d is capable of curing you. As you do that, I am going to touch your left leg and I want you to concentrate with all your might on moving your leg, even if only a little bit.”

As Dina closed her eyes, I followed her lead and said a kapitel of Tehillim. Still, even with all three of us focusing on our bitachon, we were all shocked when Dina actually managed to move her leg, something she hadn’t been able to do for days.

Infused with joy and hope, Dina continued to focus on internalizing that Hashem is the ultimate Healer, while also investing herself completely in her therapy. Just a few weeks later, her paralysis was gone and she was discharged from the hospital.

I can’t help but think about the words of the Alshich Hakadosh on the 30th perek of Tehillim where Dovid Hamelech says, “Hashem Elokai, shivati eilecha vatirpa’eini — Hashem, I called out to You, and You have healed me.” The Alshich teaches us that when we daven to Hashem for spiritual healing, something incredible happens. Much as we know that when we daven for someone else in need, Hakadosh Baruch Hu sends us salvation first, when we daven to Hashem to help us reach greater heights in our spirituality, Hashem responds with physical healing as well.

In my heart of hearts, I know that that’s what happened with Dovid, who now has children and grandchildren of his own, and is living proof of the power of emunah.

Far be it from me to suggest in any way that if a person isn’t able to conquer a medical condition Rachmana litzlan, it means that their faith in the Ribbono Shel Olam is lacking. We all know that that isn’t true, which is what makes Dovid’s story, as well as Dina’s, all the more miraculous, having seen with my own eyes how they recovered fully against incredibly daunting odds. As I publicly express my gratitude to Hashem for His kindness, I can only hope that someone reading these words and facing a serious challenge will be inspired to place their complete and total trust in Hashem, and that as much as he did for my Dovid, Hakadosh Baruch Hu will respond with the refuos and yeshuos they need.

*All names and identifying details, except for Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, have been changed in the interest of privacy.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1062)