Ambulance volunteer saved the life of his little daughter rushed to Hadassah

by Yael Fridson

The baby fell in the synagogue and suffered intracranial bleeding. Her father and a paramedic took her urgently to Hadassah, while she was sedated and ventilated.

The nightmare scenario of every parent – the baby falls out of their hands – was the experience of  Jerusalem’s resident, Chavi, who took her seven months old daughter, Ayala Shira, to the synagogue for  Rosh Hashanah. The baby dropped from her mother’s hands to the ground and injured her head.

Fortunately, her father – MDA volunteer ambulance driver, was on call. He recognized the child was convulsing and he rushed her in the ambulance, together with a neighbour that functions as a paramedic, to Hadassah’s Ein Kerem hospital.

“I never dreamed in my wildest dreams that I will use in my own ambulance to rush my youngest daughter to the hospital”, said the father, Shmaryahu, 30 years old. He arrived to Hadassah with his daughter sedated and ventilated, and she was taken to Neurosurgical intensive care.

Ayala Shira came with intracranial hemorrhage – Subdural hematoma – that puts pressure on the brain and therefore she was urgently brought into surgery to open the skull to drain the bleeding. The surgery lasted three hours.

Dr. Shweiki Moatasim, Paediatric Neurosurgeon at Hadassah Ein Kerem, says: “There is no doubt that the first aid the child received, combined with anesthesia done while in the ambulance, reduced the  damage significantly and greatly eased the work of the medical team, led by Dr. Guy Rosenthal, to fix what was in need of repair.” The baby’s recovery was impressive, and she was released with no neurological damage.

“With the end of Yom Kippur we learned we are going home. For us, it’s nothing short of a miracle”, the father recounted.