“They spoke about death as if they’re going down to the grocery and speaking about which ice cream they will buy,” Dr. Mozer-Glassberg stated.
The struggle has hit girls and kids particularly exhausting in Gaza as effectively. They make up lots of the 15,000 individuals reported killed in Gaza for the reason that struggle started on Oct. 7, in line with U.N. and well being officers in Gaza.
Dr. Bron-Harlev had lengthy deliberate on how her hospital would welcome the kids who had been held hostage. Simply over every week after Oct. 7, she emailed the Ministry of Well being: “Let’s think about optimistic days when the children will come back from captivity.”
She started constructing a crew that resembled a whole new ward. She didn’t know if any hostages had undergone sexual trauma, she stated, so she created a crew largely made up of girls. She didn’t know if anybody would return with acute bodily trauma, so she positioned a crew on name that included the top of the intensive care unit, the top of anesthesiology, the top of the surgical crew and the top of orthopedics.
Dr. Bron-Harlev then constructed a small internal circle that included senior medical doctors and nurses, social staff and psychologists, hospital assist employees and kitchen employees. Meals might be an enormous problem, she thought. What would they have the ability to abdomen, and what would they need?
When the kids arrived, some with their moms, they had been greeted slowly. They first reunited with their households and got time collectively. The medical groups approached every youngster and mom delicately.
“We took it slowly, one step in, two steps out, to see what their needs were,” Efrat Harel, the medical middle’s director of social providers, stated. Every affected person was assigned a physician, a nurse, a social employee and a psychologist.
They discovered sufferers who had misplaced 10 to fifteen p.c of their physique weight, who had heads stuffed with lice and torsos stuffed with bites, and who had hygiene not like something the hospital had ever seen. Many bathed solely as soon as throughout captivity, proper earlier than they had been set to be launched, with a bucket of chilly water and a rag.
One affected person was particularly comfy with Dr. Mozer-Glassberg, so she spent 4 days slowly brushing the woman’s hair with a lice comb and quietly crying. Dr. Mozer-Glassberg recalled her asking if she ought to shave her head as a result of the infestation was so extreme. “They will disappear in the end,” Dr. Mozer-Glassberg assured her of the lice. “They will go.”
She had initially feared that the kids would have refeeding syndrome, a harmful situation through which somebody who’s undernourished begins consuming usually once more earlier than the physique is ready to digest bigger parts.
Nonetheless, when given meals, many kids took a couple of small bites, solely to place the meals to the aspect. When requested why, Dr. Mozer-Glassberg stated that they had responded, “So the food will last for the rest of the day.”
Regardless of reassurances that extra meals was out there, many kids struggled to eat.
Then, one youngster, at 1 a.m. on his second night time on the hospital, requested for schnitzel and mashed potatoes — a joyful improvement — and the kitchen employees enthusiastically ready the meals and located a pleasant plate, silverware and a glass for serving.
Youngsters started talking in voices louder than whispers and enjoying with family members exterior of their rooms.
However questions and worries nonetheless hang-out their dad and mom and caregivers.
One mom instructed the story of how she and her youngster had been taken to Gaza on the again of a tractor with a soldier who had been gravely injured. Her daughter was lined in his blood by the point they reached Gaza, and the kid requested the mom, “What happened to the man who was pouring red?” Dr. Bron-Harlev stated, translating.
The kid nonetheless asks concerning the man. The mom doesn’t know what grew to become of him.
On Monday, after sirens went off in Petah Tikva, sending the woman and her mom to a hospital protected room, the woman requested her mom in the event that they had been going again to the tunnels. When she assured her daughter they weren’t, the woman then requested in the event that they had been transferring places, as they did in Gaza.
The hospital’s work is heartbreaking, and employees members have leaned on one another for assist, Dani Lotan, the director of psychological providers at Schneider Youngsters’s, stated. Many spoke of getting to decelerate, to understand they might not rehabilitate the kids and moms in a day or two or “compensate them for everything they lost,” Mr. Lotan stated.
Like a lot of Israel, Dr. Mozer-Glassberg is hoping she will deal with two more children, Kfir Bibas, who was 9 months outdated when kidnapped together with his 4-year-old brother, Ariel Bibas. Hamas claimed that each kids and their mom, Shiri, had been killed by Israeli airstrikes, however Israeli officers haven’t confirmed the report. The Bibas household has stated they hope claims will probably be “refuted by military officials.”
As Dr. Mozer-Glassberg spoke, a blaring siren started ringing exterior, and her cellphone introduced “tzevah adom” in Hebrew — purple alert.
“Ach,” she stated, grabbing her issues and strolling with the remainder of the employees to a close-by stairwell, as Israel’s Iron Dome protection system might be heard intercepting missiles overheard.
Her work and the struggle had been removed from over.
