We each have our own private quests, those goals we tried — or keep trying — to achieve. As we struggle and strive, the process becomes its own destination

Project Coordinator: Rachel Bachrach | Digital Artwork: Meital Ashkenazi

Almost everyone I meet knows about my COVID experience — how I caught the virus shortly after Purim, how my situation deteriorated with frightening speed until I was literally gasping for breath, how my family had to fight to keep me connected to life-saving equipment. And most people think the story came to a miraculous end when I finally returned home six and a half weeks later. But for me, the story has continued.

I was discharged from the hospital with a protocol of intensive physical therapy that would hopefully restore my right leg — immobilized due to a hematoma and severe nerve damage — to its former use. I knew very little about physical or occupational therapy; I just knew that I really didn’t believe in them.

I do now.

It’s been months of intensive therapy at this point, and having gone from the bed to the wheelchair to the walker to the cane and then walking unaided, the whole experience has been a great learning opportunity.

I have learned about the incredible skills and patience that every good therapist needs, and the importance of the role they play in their patients’ recovery process. I have learned to appreciate all those limbs I took for granted. I’ve learned how much effort and how much sheer hard work every therapy patient expends. And along the way, I discovered inner strength that I never knew that I had.