Purim miracle: 13-year-old COVID-19 patient leaves ICU in time for holiday
“Getting my son back is a gift,” said Shiri Avichezer, whose son Noam had the virus. “Thank God, he surfaced from all of this.”
By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN13-year-old Noam Avichezer before his hospitalization.(photo credit: Courtesy)
A 13-year-old boy who had been hospitalized with a severe case of COVID-19 in the intensive care unit of Hadassah-University Medical Center has been released home just in time for Purim.“Getting my son back is a gift,” said Shiri Avichezer, whose son Noam had the virus. “Thank God, he surfaced from all of this.”Noam’s father caught coronavirus, putting the family in isolation. Days later, Noam, his three siblings and his mother all tested positive for coronavirus, too.“On February 7, we realized that me and my four kids were all infected,” Avichezer told The Jerusalem Post. “Noam was fine until, on the fifth day, he got a high fever, started coughing and was having trouble breathing.”Within days Noam, who was born with a heart defect, was in the ICU, hooked up to oxygen, unable to breathe on his own. He had a high fever and his lungs were filled with fluid.He was in Hadassah’s pediatric intensive care unit for 10 days.“I’m just a kid,” Noam said during his hospitalization. “It’s very hard and very scary when I cannot breathe without an oxygen mask and, if I just move for a few seconds, I immediately feel suffocated.”“It was very hard for me, very scary to watch him fight for every breath,” Avichezer said. “They wanted to intubate him, but I begged them to try more drugs, another oxygen machine. Each day we saw improvement and, thank God, he fought hard and made it through.”She said that Noam is home and feeling much better but there is still a ways to go before he is fully recovered.Avichezer praised the staff at Hadassah and said that she was very thankful for their support.“They never left his side,” Avichezer said. “He would tell me he was afraid because he could not breathe but that he felt safe in the care of the hospital’s staff.”She described the team as “dedicated beyond words” and said they give all of themselves to save these children.Israel’s hospitalized patients are becoming much younger, according to Eran Segal of the Weizmann Institute of Science.He tweeted on Wednesday that before Israel started its vaccination campaign, 60% to 80% of all hospitalizations were of people above the age of 60. Today, 60% are below.The Health Ministry reported that 43% of new daily cases are people 19 or younger.Avichezer said that sometimes she hears fake news about the vaccines; she and her husband had appointments to be vaccinated around the same time they contracted coronavirus.“People need to go to the coronavirus unit and see what this virus does to you,” Avichezer stressed. “You see these people there suffering, all alone.“This is not just a dangerous virus that harms people with preexisting conditions like my child,” she continued. “It can happen to anyone.“Go get vaccinated,” she concluded. “Keep the rules. Wear masks. Stay safe.”
