Father of four recovering; needs help

Struck down

By Michael Orbach

Ilan Tocker, a father of four from Cedarhurst, fainted and was badly injured at a kosher restaurant in Atlantic City on the night after Tisha B’Av, July 21. The 33-year-old, a popular member of the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, hit the right side of his head on the restaurant’s marble floor. A friend immediately called 911 but only noticed that something was seriously wrong when Tocker, normally very laid-back, became aggressive with the paramedics. The aggression, the paramedics explained, was a sign of brain trauma.

Tocker’s wife, Rachel, immediately drove from the Beaver Lake bungalow colony in upstate NY where the family was spending the summer, to the hospital in Atlantic City. Surgeons there relieved pressure and swelling on Tocker’s brain by removing the right side of his skull, but then they noticed something worse: the left side of his head was also swelling, a sure sign of intracranial bleeding. According to Stacy Mayer, Tocker’s sister-in-law, Rachel was given a stark choice: “[They could] remove the left side of his skull but there’s only 10 percent chance of survival and, most likely, he will be a vegetable,” Mayer recalled being told by the doctors. Or the family could do nothing and Tocker would “pass away in a few hours.”

The family was frozen by the decision. Tocker’s parents had just made Aliyah three weeks before and were on the phone with Rachel struggling to decide if it would be better for their son to die rather than live his life unconscious. Moments later the decision became moot as the dire situation worsened. The pressure in Tocker’s skull had skyrocketed, making further surgery at that time all but impossible.

“The swelling was so high that if it goes one point higher he’ll be brain dead,” Mayer recalled.

The family waited for several hours and prayed.

“It looked very grim,” recalled Michal Weinstein of Woodmere, a friend of the family who drove with Rachel from Beaver Lake. “We all began praying at that point... We were thinking about going to his funeral the next day.”

Mayer and some friends sent out a mass text message asking people to say tehillim. She called the rabbi of Chabad of Binghamton, with whom she was close in her college days, and arranged for a group of people to read the entire Tehillim over the course of 24 hours. Another friend, Sara Rosenberg, decided to begin a challah group, placing hope in a Kabalistic belief that baking challah for Shabbos for Tocker’s sake would help him.

“We were trying to gather 43 women to bake in his zechus [merit],” Mayer explained. What happened surprised them.

“On Facebook, hundreds of women all said, ‘I will do it,’” Mayer said. “We posted recipes... and people kept on posting pictures of their challah. Women who don’t know who [Ilan] is, who never baked challah in their lives, all baked for Ilan.”

Within several hours, Tocker’s brain pressure began to drop precipitously; so fast, the doctors began to believe it was a herniation. “The doctors never saw anything like that,” Mayer said. At 3 a.m. when the pressure had decreased to a safe level, and with just a slim hope of recovery, Tocker underwent surgery to remove the left side of his skull.

The surgery was successful and the swelling decreased further.

Over the last two months Tocker has beat the odds and is making progress towards a full recovery. When he was taken out of a medically induced coma his eyes began tracking. Days later, he began mouthing words and he currently talks in full sentences. Tocker is playing with his iPhone and beating friends at cards. On a blog dedicated to Tocker, Mayer recounted how he offered to pay a nurse “literally anything” to get him out of the hospital.

After a session with a cognitive therapist Tocker turned to his wife and asked who the woman was.

“He said that she keeps coming into his room to try to talk to him and ask him questions and he is just not that interested,” Mayer related.

A full recovery for Tocker is a long way off and could take years, but the family and doctors are optimistic. Tocker celebrated his 33rd birthday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan, where he was moved after the surgeries. Tocker’s oldest son, Benjamin, 7, plans on throwing him a surprise party as soon as he gets out of the hospital.

At the moment, Tocker’s family faces yet another daunting challenge: paying for his astronomical medical bill. Tocker’s insurance plan on Blue Cross and Blue Shield covered the surgeries and the first 30 days of acute care. On Sept. 7, Tocker’s 30 days were up. The next surgery is on Sept. 14, Erev Yom Kippur, and to keep him in the hospital for the extra week, the family needed to raise $25,000. Tocker’s insurance also only provides for one month of sub-acute care and 60 days of therapists visits; to make a complete recovery, Tocker will likely require several months of sub-acute care in a full rehabilitation center and a therapist visit every day for the next year.

The total, by conservative estimates, will be close to $40,000 a month.

Tocker’s friends and family have set up a foundation for him. A website, Ilantockerfoundation.com, provides periodic updates about his condition as well as links to donate money for his medical care. Tocker’s friends at Beaver Lake have begun selling cookbooks to pay for his treatment. So far, they’ve sold 300 of the 500 editions they published and believe they’ll earn close to $8,000 from the endeavor. Through charitable donations the foundation has raised close to $25,000. Tocker’s friends are also selling lulavim and esrogim to raise money for his treatment. Any money raised will go strictly towards medical care for Tocker. Should there be extra money it will be donated to Tomchei Shabbos, where Tocker has been a regular volunteer.

“It’s not to pay for food and electricity for the family,” Mayer explained. “It’s to get him better.”