If all goes according to plan. It’s one of the sub-sets of ‘It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time,’ along with others like ‘The best laid plans o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley,’ Mick Jagger’s ‘You can’t always get what you want,’ and, of course, the Jewish version, ‘Man proposes and God disposes.’ What these disparate sayings have in common is the understanding that life is often out our control, that things will NOT go the way we have in mind. Barbara and I were sitting in the office of our primary care physician, Adam Albert, showing him the list of tests I need to have completed prior to my laser surgery on March 1, asking him what does this all mean and where do we go to do so-and-so. In the course of the conversation, we mentioned that I would need to have my catheter replaced by the end of December, three months after it was last done. Our doctor, who is always on top of things, told us that we didn’t have to go to the emergency room, that the procedure could be done by a specially trained nurse in the relative comfort of the nurses station down the hall. At which point, the good doctor picked up the phone and called Rachel, the head nurse, for confirmation. Someone would call us in the middle of December to schedule an appointment. OK, we said; works for us. Of course, working for us doesn’t always translate into working at all, which, if it did, I’d have nothing to write about.

Needless to say, we were the ones who had to do the prompting, but I was given an appointment for the morning of Dec. 31. The only difficulty was that the male nurse who was supposed to do the procedure was working in Pisgat Ze’ev at the time, and no, we had no easy way of getting there. A few frantic calls later and we were rescheduled for the next day late in the afternoon. And yes, the fellow was waiting for us, ready to change my catheter, which he did.

As we all know, the proof of the pudding is in the eating; except in this case, the ‘proof’  would be in liquid properly flowing into the bag – meaning that the procedure was a success. Which wasn’t happening. Keep drinking; if nothing happens in an hour or so, you’ll have to go to the emergency room. Wasn’t that the point, you ask, that I wouldn’t have to go there? (Just about this time, Barbara got a message from her friend Varda, that she and Howie were with friends celebrating New Years in Mexico. Great, I thought, they’re in Cancun and I’m in Miyun.)_And so, with water going in one end and nothing happening the at the other end, causing me acute discomfort and extreme anxiety, off we trotted, on that Thursday evening, to the E.R.

It wasn’t that our doctor was wrong percentage-wise. Replacing a catheter is a relatively simple procedure, and there are rarely any complications – if all goes according to plan. It’s just that when it doesn’t, there’s nothing to be done except head to the E.R., where they have the staff – the doctors, the senior doctors, the specialists, the super-specialists – and the diagnostic equipment that they don’t have in the nurses station at the clinic.

All of which was needed. Nothing was flowing through my new catheter because there was a clot somewhere in my system that had to be flushed out. Lots of time figuring this out, lots of time doing the flushing. And then at about 3AM, I was wheeled in for a CT. And of course, whoever was going to read the results wouldn’t be on duty until the morning. At about 8AM, the first doctor I had seen the night before came in with the good news. Everything is OK; you can go home now. Which I did by myself, sporting a new, heavy-duty catheter.

I had sent Barbara home as soon as the buses were running. Someone had to take care of our friend’s cats, our friend being in the hospital with stones in her bile duct that were too big to remove the usual way. We were supposed to have friends stay with us over Shabbat, but that got cancelled because of some health issues I still don’t understand. Which was just as well, all things considered. The week before, we had spent an hour or so with another couple, the husband having some REALLY serious health issues. That’s just for starters. I could go on and on. Remember there are lots of our friends and acquaintances in the Oy Vey Club.

Somewhere along the line, something occurred to me. It’s the end of the calendar year, at which time several things always happen. You’ll get frantic please from all sorts of people and charities, asking for donations because they are ninety something percent of reaching their annual goal, and can you just help put them over the top?

And, of course, it’s award time, it’s lists of the best of 2025. And I thought that we, the Oy Vey Club, need to get into the act. We can hardly do The Year’s Best, but we could certainly do the year’s worst. That’s it! We’ll call it the Yukkies, which we will award in the following categories: the most doctor’s visits, the most time in E.R., the most time spent in the hospital, the most procedures undergone, the most injections, the most medication taken, the most painkillers swallowed. I’m sure I’ve left out a few important categories, but this is good for starters. Once we finalize the categories, we can ask for nominees. Your input will, of course, be solicited. We can have a live ceremony from some hospital lobby announcing the winners, with a simultaneous Zoom feed for all those too infirm or in too much pain to show up live.

I would have been happy just to chill for a few weeks until it was time to deal with the various tests I need before the surgery. But if my personal plumbing is being dealt with, there’s always the plumbing and electricity in our apartment to cause consternation when we least expect it. I know this has happened to you. You are sitting in your place of residence, seemingly without a care in the world, when the lights go out and there’s no electricity. What to you do? What everybody does; you look outside. Is it just you or is it the whole block, the whole neighborhood, the whole city? It’s not that misery loves company. But if it’s not just you, then somebody else will be there to fix the problem – sooner or later.

In our case, no such luck. It was just us. We peered at the panel with the circuit breakers, noticing that a large yellow breaker was down. I flipped it up (which is not what you are supposed to do, but I did it anyway) and the lights came back on. What was the problem? We had no idea, but if all’s well that ends well… Until I tried to turn on the heating element for our hot water. Back in the dark again. (Stress.)

At least we had diagnosed where the problem lay. Barbara sent a message to Liz, our contact person for the company that built our complex, and the next morning, Nadav, their trouble shooter, showed up. He climbed up to the building attic where the water tanks are housed. Guess what: there was a leak, which was shorting out our electricity.

A few phone calls must have been made, because the next morning a guy from the company that installed the water tanks in our complex showed up ostensively to fix our problem.

(There is an expression here in The Land, one that Barbara and I were unaware of: al hapanim, which, I guess, has some literal meaning about someone’s face. But in this context, it refers to hapless souls who can’t get anything right. We had been told by our neighbors when we first moved in that we would have a problem with our water supply because so did everyone else in this building. If you can remember back a year ago, I chronicled our plumbing issues, as well as all the other travails we encountered in turning into this raw space into our home.)

The workman came and when he left, I could turn on the electricity for the hot water without shorting out the entire apartment. I guess he fixed the problem. And so, I went out, having some errands to run. But when I returned, there was no hot water. I don’t mean there was no water that was hot. There was no water of any temperature coming from the hot water side of the faucet. At about this time, Barbara was watching a short video sent by the building’s vaad, showing the bottom floor of our building being turned into a mikvah. Could these two problems be related, I wondered.

It didn’t take long to get the answer. One of our neighbors showed up at our door. He had sent his son to turn off our hot water supply because it was flooding the building. Nothing like fixing one problem by causing a bigger one. (More stress.) At least we have electricity.

Liz was good enough to send a different man the following morning (Fri.), so maybe we could take a shower before Shabbat instead of heading down to David and Bernice’s place, towels in hand, the way we had the first few weeks in our new apartment.

It’s not exactly hot, but at least now it’s warm.  Lots of people on this planet don’t even have that. We can muddle through. At least, let Liz know.

Sunday morning bright and early, the first repairman returned. Maybe a few days rest reinvigorated his grey cells, because whatever he did fixed the problem. Hot water a-plenty! (Relief.)

All the while, Barbara is having serious problems with her back and legs. And let’s not forget Pooms, our senior cat, who recently had surgery to remove a growth on her paw, resulting in multiple trips back to our vet to forestall any infection.

The key word here is S-T-R-E-S-S. You pile one issue on top of another, and you wind up with a heap of trouble. Of course, we have friends who are worse off, this one’s procedure put off because someone forgot to schedule an operating room, this one with too many medications fighting each other, and you have to hope that all this confusion is not contagious. We’re trying to chill, which is the best remedy for a stress overload. Maybe we should nominate ourselves for a Yukky, although I’m not sure we’d win – assuming that we would want to. Perhaps some other time. Meanwhile, feel free to send in your nominations. If all goes according to plan, we’ll announce the winners shortly.