A healing place for children
by Shoshana Kordova, Israel 21c
Two-year-old Mahmoud Rasmi developed an immediate rapport with one of the first nurses he encountered at Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel - even though she couldn’t understand Mahmoud’s request in Arabic for a present, his father said as the toddler recovered from a cardiac operation.
Mahmoud was being treated for a narrow vein in his heart that was preventing him from breathing properly, after a doctor at another hospital recommended that the family take him to Schneider, in Petah Tikva. During an operation in January, his parents slept on foldout beds next to Mahmoud, which the hospital provides as part of its policy of involving parents in their children’s treatment.
“I felt like I was in a hotel,” said Mahmoud’s father, Abu Fur Rasmi, 41. Rasmi, a factory worker from the Israeli Arab village of Jatt in the north, spoke to ISRAEL21c from a glass-enclosed room in the center of the corridor, where medical staff have meetings while remaining visible to the patients. On the other side of the glass, a maroon-hatted clown entertained a child in a hospital bed just past a doorframe painted in bright yellow and purple hues.
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