ABSTRACT
Roszika was a 55-year-old Hungarian woman. When I first met her she had lived in Israel for many years, and was married and a mother of a 15-year-old daughter, and a 19-year-old soldier. I was then a 30-year-old recently graduated doctor, just beginning my specialization in family medicine. She held a doctorate in German literature, and was a poet and translator, an extremely intelligent and interesting woman. Her brightness and charisma overshadowed her handicap – she had a severe chronic lung disease caused by tuberculosis that she had suffered when she was a child in the concentration camps. Her breathing was all sound – loud, harsh, and frightening breath sounds, a result of her lung disease. Her health and life difficulties were many but she found comfort and support in her beautiful daughter. Anna was a tall, loving and helpful adolescent. Her beauty radiated, in marked contrast with the heavy, somber, dark furniture and general atmosphere of their house. I almost didn’t see her son. But at this time, Roszika’s greater difficulty was not her health, but nursing her husband.
