Twelve years ago on January 11, 2002, Rabbi Sandra Cohen suffered a terrifying stroke at age 34 — but you’d never know it looking at her now. Soft spoken, articulate and smart as a whip, she nails imponderables in one or two lines.
The physically fit Cohen who ran 50 miles a week and who led powerful High Holiday services is a memory. Lingering complications such as migraines, vertigo and depleted energy curtail her freedom.
Yet a tranquility born of lengthy reflection radiates like the winter sun falling on her kipa.
The stroke ruptured her body, career expectations and self-image. It was horrible. Yet she believes her life is flooded by an abundance of good.
“At some point, reality rears its ugly head and you say, ‘Listen, if I want to function in the world I have to deal with reality — not what I’d want it to be, but as it really is,’” she says in retrospect.
“I still miss things about being a pulpit rabbi. I loved leading High Holiday services. But that’s over. I’m not that person anymore. Now who am I? I have to find meaning in a different way and enjoy what I’m able to do.
“But my life is blessed in so many ways. I have a happy, wonderful daughter, Shira. My husband Ben is marvelous: so kind and compassionate.
“G-d has blessed me with such abundance,” says Cohen, 46. “Do I miss my professional life? Of course I miss it. But I’m still able to work. My mind works. I can study text, and teach text to others who are interested in learning.
“On top of that, I’m able to feel my blessings. Sometimes you’re so emotionally cut off — depressed, sad, grieving — that you can’t experience the abundance. I can, and I’m extremely grateful.”
And when shadows inevitably cloud the light, she has developed the intellectual maturity to say, “It will come around again.”
Cohen, who was raised in a classically Reform home, has held pulpit positions at Reform temples such as Emanuel and Micah.
She began attending Conservative Rodef Shalom with her baby Shira in 1997, while she was the spiritual leader of Temple Micah, to enhance her daughter’s Jewish experience.
When the family ultimately joined the congregation, Cohen was not making a denominational statement. It was a personal choice based on an inevitable progression.
Cohen has studied with Rabbi Bernard Gerson since moving to Denver 19 years ago. That’s a powerful connection — but there were other reasons.
“I’m probably more ritually traditional than most Reform Jews,” she explains. “I like to pray in Hebrew. I may value Halachah more than a lot of Reform Jews. I’ve kept kosher since rabbinical school (HUC-JIR).
“On the other hand, I’m not a Conservative rabbi because I’m only ‘sort of’ shomer Shabbos. I’m probably a Conservative Jew, but as a rabbi I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I have a foot in both camps.”
Scheduled to teach a class in an hour, Cohen is generous with her time, intelligence and insights.
It’s as if she, as much as anyone, wants to understand the brave new world that is her life.
The IJN interviewed Cohen in October, 2002, eight months after all hell broke loose in this very study. She obligingly returns to the morning that changed her life. Only her eyes betray occasional disbelief.
“I was typing my newsletter for Micah,” she says, glancing at the computer, “when my left arm stopped working.” It was 9:15 a.m. “And as they say, I had the worst headache of my life,” Cohen adds with a slight grin.
She had trouble doing a spell check. Worse, she couldn’t remember where she put her eyeglasses — and she can’t see without them.
Cohen looked down. Her left hand was lying over her right hand like a limp dishrag. She couldn’t move it.
“I managed to reach Ben at work. My speech was slurred. I was inarticulate. And I was crying.”
Ben asked, “Is it Shira?” Cohen said no. He grabbed his things and rushed home.
Cohen managed to dial 911. “The operator wanted to know if I had anything to drink that morning,” she laughs. “She thought I was drunk!” Stuck in an incoherent loop, Cohen hung up.
The operator called back and dispatched EMTs. Somehow Cohen made it downstairs to let them inside. They also suspected alcohol. She was a healthy young woman. What else could it be?
When Ben arrived home, he found his disoriented wife trying to make sense to the emergency technicians. “He assured them that this was not my normal behavior.”
Time was ticking too quickly. Cohen needed immediate help.
Finally an ambulance whisked her to Swedish Hospital, which was closer to the Cohens’ southeast Denver home than Rose Medical Center. Doctors ordered an MRI. Although MRIs can’t diagnose a stroke in progress, they can reveal prior episodes.
Cohen sang Adon Olam at the top of her lungs to drown out the thud of the MRI — but nothing could prepare her for the results. The test revealed that she had suffered two prior strokes.
“They were completely asymptomatic,” she says. “I had no symptoms whatsoever.”
The neurologist wanted to administer the clot-dissolving drug tPA. However, if there was bleeding in the brain, the drug could kill her.
Influenced by a recent segment of the medical drama “ER,” the Cohens went for tPA. It was the right call. “Otherwise I would have had massive damage to my left side,” she says.
Shira, who was four-and-a-half, was unaware of the chaos. “She remembers that I gave her rides in my hospital bed,” Cohen laughs.
Not long ago, when Shira was moving into adolescence, mother and daughter tackled the job of clearing out her stuffed animal collection.
“Suddenly she said, ‘You can’t throw away that bear!’” Cohen remembers. “I asked why, and Shira said it was the Stroke Bear. ‘That’s the one Dad and I brought to the hospital. It had balloons on its feet.’ So we still have the Stroke Bear.”
She looks at the snow-crusted street.
“Everybody dies. But the stroke shook up my whole life and my sense of being a competent young woman.”
The stroke debilitated Cohen on multiple levels. Unable to drive or read aloud, she suffered daytime hallucinations, constant migraines and nauseating dizziness. Her energy was sub-zero. Cohen endured all of it. She had no choice.
Then the doctor told Cohen she needed a tubal ligation — meaning no more children. Pregnancy was too risky, especially because the medical experts had no idea why she had a stroke in the first place.
“He was very clear about that,” she says of the tubal ligation. “It’s always made me a little sad that G-d didn’t bless us with another child. Fortunately we adore the one we have.”
Sandy and Ben also updated their legal wills and drew up living wills.
“It felt weird because Shira was only five. But it was the responsible thing to do. You never know what can happen.”
Cohen condenses her living will to a summary glimpse: “If I’m in a vegetative state, I don’t want to be resuscitated.”
Reality “gives rise to scary imaginings,” she admits.
“But you have to live in the here and now,” Cohen says, “and you have to bet on the odds. You have to say, ‘Right now it’s fine, and the odds are that it’s going to be fine.’ You can’t live in the scary spaces. It’s not doable.”
Despite the most resolute attitude, fear intervenes unbidden.
A few years ago, Cohen suffered a frightening drug interaction and became severely ill. Her weight dropped to 93 pounds. She was confined to a wheelchair.
“That was the darkest time in my life,” she says, “even worse than the stroke.
“I was an emotional mess. Everything piled up on me at once. When you’re in the middle of that, you can’t see anything. You just try to hang on day by day.”
The stroke, coupled with the drug-related illness, has taught her an invaluable lesson about life beyond her control.
“You can be as smart as all get-out, but that’s not going to fix things when your body attacks you. And it’s not going to fix anything when your mind comes after you either. When you’re upset, you’re upset.
“It’s all very well to say that a good attitude is everything, but as far I’m concerned, I had to go through being angry, upset and depressed. You have to go through those feelings.”
Several years passed before she could sit through High Holiday services without being overwhelmed by the loss of her former self.
“I really enjoyed leading those services,” she says. “It took me a long time to accept — and I still struggle with it — that my disabilities are real. I’m not making it up. This is the best I’m ever going to be. I will never improve.”
The room waits for her to resume.
“It’s nice to be able to say, ‘I accept who I am.’ Do you know what [transcendentalist Margaret Fuller] said — ‘I accept the universe’? Well, you damn well better! What’s the alternative?
“But coming to terms with reality is not as easy as it sounds. I spent years saying, I don’t want to come to terms with this reality! But if you don’t, you’re not going to find the joy that’s here.”
For Sandra Cohen, the road from then to now has entailed putting one very determined foot in front of the other. Yet the migraines, vertigo and myriad challenges don’t define this petite woman of enormous strength.
“I’m in a much better place than before,” she says. “I see my neurologist regularly. I’m on tons of medication, but I’m stabilized. I require 10 to 12 hours of sleep a night. If I don’t get that much, I pay for it.
“It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I need so much sleep. Shira tucks me in at night.”
Cohen, who only uses a cane when she’s outside, has dusted off her treadmill. “It’s going fine,” she says of the new regimen. “I just have to hold on real tight.”
The neurologist recently told Cohen that she must stop walking her little dog Dassie due to balance issues. “Dassie keeps pulling me over,” she laughs, “which is embarrassing because she only weighs 15 pounds.
“The dog is a dog. It’s not her problem. But it feels really foolish that I can’t walk her anymore.”
Dassie curls up by the window, unperturbed and oblivious.
Despite medical “musts” like conserving her energy and living a balanced life, Cohen is active in the community.
She studies Daf Yomi (“Only six more years and I’ll be done with the Talmud!”) by herself, learns and teaches Talmud in a variety of settings with Rabbi Gerson and Sari Horowitz, teaches in the Melton adult-mini school at CAJE and is on the adjunct faculty of Regis and DU.
“I’m also considering going back to school for a doctorate,” she says.
“Learning is so much fun. I’ve always enjoyed text study because it’s so nice to have something to do in a very disciplined way.
“And studying with others makes me feel less out of touch.”
Throughout the conversation, Cohen’s wit surfaces as sharp as ever — like when she casts a hopeless glance at the green plant on the circular table.
“I can’t keep plants alive,” she comments. “We call our greenhouse the House of Death. Now we store our Passover dishes and extra freezer there.”
Shira, a junior at Denver Jewish Day School, is considering becoming a modern Orthodox Jew. “When she told me, I said, ‘Well, I can’t send you to a Jewish day school and not expect it to take,’” Cohen says.
“As long as she honors what we do here, we will always honor whatever she chooses. It’s a mutual honor.”
Cohen says that her family is all over the map religiously. Ben is agnostic “and probably goes along for the ride,” she smiles. “But he loves the traditions.” Her sister is modern Orthodox.
At High Holiday services last fall, Cohen contemplated two things at length: judging people on the side of merit; and the insidiousness of making comparisons, “little ones as well as big ones.
“Whether it’s noticing how fast someone davens in shul to obsessing over who is a better person, I want to judge people — and myself — kindly,” she says.
“G-d doesn’t look down and say this person is better than that person. G-d wants you to do the best you can do. It’s not trying to be a better Jew but a good Jew in my own right — a good person in my own right.”
The telephone rings. She answers, listens, hangs up.
“I can’t tell you how many times the bank calls telling me it’s my last chance to lower the interest on my credit cards. If it’s the last chance, why do they keep calling? A last chance should mean something!”
During the 2002 interview, Cohen said, “We see the meaning in retrospect.” What does she see today?
A sigh escapes her lips.
“One of the morning blessings says, ‘G-d has given me everything I need,’” she says.
“I think to myself, ‘Aren’t I lucky to have everything I need in front of me?’ Not just food, clothing and shelter — although that’s certainly important. There are people who are enslaved and denied all freedoms.
“When I was really sick a few years ago, I relied on my family and friends. The people around me had faith I would get better, so I had faith in their faith. I love them. They love me. I trust that will be enough.”
Doctors have never determined why Cohen had three strokes at such a young age — a medical black hole that increases her chances for another stroke.
“Yes, I could have another stroke,” she nods emphatically. “Shira is also at risk.
“I don’t think everything happens for the best,” she says.
“I don’t believe if you just put yourself in the right frame of mind that everything you need will simply come to you.
“I think the act of prayer is important even when you’re not experiencing G-d. Prayer is a discipline. If I pray on a consistent basis, I might have an interaction with G-d.
“I show up regularly, and G-d will show up occasionally.
“We meet there.”
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
