Posted on 10/21/21
Baltimore, MD - June 3, 2019 - Editor's note: As we mark the 33rd anniversary of our own diagnosis, we are reposting this story in a show of support for those who are struggling with any kind of illness and are davening for them to have a Refuah Shleimah min hashomayim.
Twenty-five years ago they told him his cancer would kill him
Jeff Cohn celebrated several anniversaries this year: 36 years of marriage to his wife Karen; one year since he launched Baltimore’s own Jewish news site, BaltimoreJewishLife.com; and 25 years since he was diagnosed with a form of cancer that he was told was incurable.
Jeff admits that no one expected him to survive and he is now a 57-year old grandfather of five only through chasdei Hashem (G-d’s kindness). His story, filled with emunah (faith) and humor, is a tangible reminder that all of our lives rest in Hashem’s capable hands.
It all started with a small growth on my head. Having had acne as a teenager, I was accustomed to little things popping up here and there, but it just wouldn’t go away. I tried all the usual remedies, but not only didn’t any of them help, the growth just kept getting bigger.
My regular dermatologist looked at the mass, but pronounced it beyond his capabilities and sent me to the University of Maryland. A dermatological surgeon there excised the offending blemish and told me she would call me the next day with the biopsy results.
I remember thinking, “Biopsy? Why are you wasting time and money on something so minor?”
Life went back to normal. I went home to my wife Karen and my seven-year-old son Gobbie. The promised call back never came and my curiosity got the better of me. I called for the results of the biopsy, but was told they didn’t have them. I called the next day and the next, but they kept pushing me off. Finally, they told me to come in for the results.
I should have known right away that something was wrong. The doctor, who on my last visit had called me by my first name, was very formal, addressing me as “Mr. Cohn.” I still remember her words.
“Mr. Cohn, you have cancer. Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”
I looked around the room for the hidden camera, but couldn’t find one. Surely this must be a joke. It was all so surreal. She couldn’t possibly have been talking to me.
But she was. She told me that I needed to see Dr. Meyer Heyman at the University of Maryland Cancer Center immediately.
Naturally, I ignored her. I turned around and went to work.
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At the time, I worked in the fabric business with my father, Alvin Cohn, z’l. I gave him my diagnosis and like his ancestor, Aharon Hakohein upon hearing the news of the death of his two sons, my father accepted Hashem’s decision silently. Emunah and bitachon (trust in Hashem) run strong in my family and my father had more than his fair share of both. In fact, when my son Gobbie and his wife Shayna had their first boy, they were unable to give him my father’s name, as Shayna’s father (yibadel l’chaim tovim) has the same name. Instead they chose the name Uriel Binyanim, whose first letters, alef and bais, stand for emunah and bitachon, a loving tribute to my father.
Baruch Hashem, my best friend, who had just made aliyah, happened to be in Baltimore on business and I called him. He came to the office and reminded me that even with an incurable form of cancer, there were many options, and that advances in treatment were rapidly becoming available.
That day was a Friday, and my sister and brother-in-law came over after the Shabbos seudah. Everyone sat there surprised, saddened, and shocked. Except for me. This was my cancer, something that, for whatever reason, Hashem had chosen for me. He and I were going to deal with it together.
I went to Ner Israel to speak with Reb Yissocher Frand, a very close personal friend.
I told Rabbi Frand, “I know why I am sick.”
He looked at me incredulously and, leaning over slightly, asked, “You do?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I do.”
Rabbi Frand leaned in closer and asked, “Why?”
Having davened for the amud (in front of the congregation) on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur for many years, I felt confident I knew the answer.
“Ki chotey u’foshea ani [for I am a careless and willful sinner],” I answered, using words that I uttered every year as the shaliach tzibur (representative of the congregation) in Hineni (right before Mussaf of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).
I will never forget Rabbi Frand’s response. He leaned across the desk and looked me straight in the eye. “I hate to break the news to you,” he said, “but you are not that big of a tzaddik that the Ribono Shel Olam talks to you directly.”
Throughout my ordeal, Rabbi Frand was very positive and sympathetic, and a tremendous source of chizuk.
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The University of Maryland sent me to Johns Hopkins for a consultation on my tumor, and came up with a plan to treat it on an out-patient basis at the University of Maryland. My dear friend Hillel Soclof was then the chief administrator at the University of Maryland Cancer Center, and he went out of his way to make me as comfortable as possible.
As the doctors read us the list of side effects, Karen and I looked at each other.
Hair loss? We could deal with that.
Vomiting and nausea? Okay, also manageable.
Sterility? Time out. This was something we hadn’t anticipated.
The doctors told me I was scheduled to start a six-month course of chemotherapy the next day.
Karen and I looked at each other in alarm. Were our dreams of having another child going to be shattered forever?
I told the doctors I wasn’t ready to start treatment yet.
They didn’t beat around the bush. “You don’t understand,” they told me. “If you don’t start tomorrow, you could die.”
I told them I understood perfectly well, but chemotherapy was going to have to wait a few weeks.
I went to see a friend that night and told him about the day’s events. He concurred with the doctors’ assessment and, as a psychiatrist, pronounced me officially crazy.
“Don’t you understand?” he asked. “They research every aspect of this disease. They understand everything that goes on here. If they tell you you need to start chemotherapy tomorrow, you need to start tomorrow.”
Maybe they needed me to start tomorrow, but I wasn’t prepared to start yet. I wasn’t waiting for anything in particular to happen. I just needed to feel like I had some small amount of control over my own life.
Meanwhile, we still couldn’t face the idea that we were never going to be able to have another child. While I was taking a few weeks to psych myself up for my treatment, Karen called a fertility specialist and secured an appointment three weeks down the road.
The specialist asked her, “Why are you here?”
Karen explained that we had been married for a number of years and had only one child.
Again, the question was repeated. “But why are you here?”
Again Karen tried to explain that she was hoping the doctor could help us have more children.
“But you are expecting!” came the specialist’s reply.
We were shocked. Elated. Stunned. Thrilled. This was nothing short of a miracle!
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Now it was time to face the music.
Six months of chemotherapy. To put it mildly, it wasn’t pleasant.
Though non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was incurable at the time, the doctors pumped my body full of toxins in an effort to kill the cancer without doing the same to me. They would never offer any kind of prognosis, but did their best to be optimistic.
The doctors told me in advance how I could expect to feel on any given day of my treatment and they were eerily accurate. Some mornings I would wake up thinking I was feeling terrific, but I couldn’t make it as far as my car. Then I would remember that they had warned me that it was going to be a difficult day. I learned to use their advice to plan my day, working whenever I could and trying to pretend, at least on those days, that everything was normal.
Today cancer is widespread and often curable, but back then you didn’t want people to know because they would assume that you were dying. Part of keeping my cancer a secret involved wearing a toupee, although in a small town like Baltimore, most people knew my situation. A friend took me to see someone before my hair fell out so they could make me something that looked like my own hair.
I remember seeing Dr. Chandra Balani, an Indian doctor, early in my treatment. Two weeks before, Dr. Balani had told me that my hair was going to fall out.
I came in and pulled on my hair and said to him, “See? It’s still here!”
He had brown skin and very white teeth and I still remember how he smiled at me as he said, jovially, “Don’t worry, it will!!”
It did. One Motzei Shabbos I was showering before a visit with friends when my hair literally just came off. It didn’t hurt. It was like picking a piece of paper up from a table. We called our friends and warned them about my appearance. Then, hair or no hair, off we went. I wasn’t going to stay home and feel sorry for myself. Were they really going to stop being my friends just because I had no hair?
I could never have survived chemotherapy without the support of my family. My wife, Karen, was a rock, juggling the responsibilities of my illness with her pregnancy and a full-time job while still managing to take exceptional care of our seven-year-old son. My parents and in-laws were wonderful, as were so many others. Twenty-five years ago, people assumed that a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence and they wanted to do anything they could for me before I left this world.
But clearly the doctors don’t know everything.
Today, the minute someone gets sick, e-mails calling for Tehillim circle the globe within seconds. Things were different then, but in the close-knit Baltimore community, word did get out. To this day, people who davened for me back then come up to me and ask, “How is Yehoshua Yaakov Hakohen ben Elka doing?” When people davened, they really davened, and they took their responsibility very seriously.
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I remember eating on Tisha B’Av that year, and I didn’t have the strength to lead the davening on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. But time went on and I made it through chemotherapy. I went to Eretz Yisrael for three weeks to recuperate and just being there was part of my refuah. I walked everywhere and lost much of the weight I had gained from certain medications I had taken. My hair started growing back as well, with my first white whiskers coming in.
Our son, Rafael Tzvi Nissim Cohn, or Rafi, as we call him, was born two months later, on the first day of Rosh Chodesh Adar. Rafael and Nissim were obvious choices under the circumstances and Tzvi was for my maternal grandfather, Harry Altshul, z’l. The roshei tevos (first letters) of his name spell out the word “R’tzon” (will). Dovid Hamelech’s words came to mind: “R’tzon yereyav yaase, v’es shavasam yishma v’yoshiyem” (The will of those who fear Him He will do; and their cry He will hear and He will save them—Tehillim 145:19). Hashem had heard our tefillos and had finally granted us the child we longed for so desperately.
As I reviewed my d’var Torah for the bris, I realized that the roshei tevos of his full name, Rafael Tzvi Nissim Cohn, spell out the word “Ritzoncha” (your will). How wonderful that in the naming of our son, we acknowledged that everything that happened—my recovery and the birth of our son—was His will!?
Rafi’s bris was an emotional, standing-room-only event. Not only had we been trying for years to have a child, but I wasn’t even supposed to be alive! The simcha in the room was palpable. Today, Rafi lives with his wife Chedva and infant daughter Neima in Yerushalayim, and he spends his days learning in kollel.
I wish I could tell you when the doctors pronounced me cured, but I can’t. About two years later, when the doctors kept insisting that I come back for endless follow-up visits, my stubborn streak kicked in again. I just couldn’t take it anymore and I never went back. I wanted to close the chapter on this part of my life. Was it the right thing to do? Definitely not, and I wouldn’t recommend that anyone else do it. Someone must be watching over me, because I am still here.
It is impossible to go through cancer and remain the same as you were before your diagnosis. On the simplest level, while I don’t recall most of the questions they asked at the beginning of my treatment, I do remember being asked if I ate red meat or drank soda. I gave them both up completely. On a more spiritual level, I became very close with Hashem as a result of my illness. His presence is so strong in my life that I literally converse out loud with Him. I am more easily able to judge others favorably and, while I was careful about not talking during davening before, I am positively militant about it now. When you go through challenges and know that the heavenly court is reviewing your every action, you try to give the prosecutor as little ammunition as possible to use against you.
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I never made a seudas hoda’a to thank Hashem for all that transpired, because it wasn’t generally done in those days. But having passed the 25-year mile marker, I feel compelled to recount my story publicly. I want to give the same chizuk that I received during my bout with cancer to people facing the same difficulties.
Looking back, I realize that my darkest moments were filled with the brightest of lights. My friends and family held my hand, waiting for me to need something, just so they could help me. My mother brought me milkshakes when I was too sick to eat anything. My wife Karen endured the horrors of watching a spouse go through a treatment that sometimes seemed worse than just giving up. I saw uncertainty in my son Gobbie’s face as he watched me, yet even on the bleakest of days, I knew that one day I would dance at his chasuna. The combination of my zechus avos (the merits of my forefathers) and the countless tefillos of family, friends, and even total strangers, somehow unlocked shaarei shamayim (the gates of heaven) for me. The true love that I witnessed, in heaven and on earth, somehow gave me the strength to go on even when I thought I couldn’t.
The emunah and bitachon that my father ingrained in me saw me through those difficult months. So many others have had these traits and still didn’t make it. Why does my story have a happy ending while many do not? I can’t answer that question. As Rabbi Frand reminded me, I’m “not that big of a tzaddik.” Still, I feel privileged that Hashem singled me out for a purpose.
Maybe it is so I can give chizuk to other people who are standing where I stood 25 years ago, hearing the dreaded words, “You have cancer,” and remind them that Hashem may have given doctors a talent for healing, but He is the ultimate healer. With the support of loved ones and, most certainly, with emunah and bitachon as constant companions, even incurable cancers can be cured. •
Having been the recipient of chizuk during his illness, Jeff would be happy to provide chizuk to anyone in a similar situation. Feel free to contact him at Jeff@BaltimoreJewishLife.com.
This article first appeared in the July 7th edition of AMI Magazine