On the first day of fighting, October 7, Menachem, a 22-year-od soldier, was wounded in the arm by Hamas terrorists infiltrating from Gaza. After surgery at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, he is being treated in the Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Mount Scopus.
There, physiotherapist Maayan Hadad, who was treating Menachem, thought that he might be encouraged and enriched from meeting another of her patients, Ofer Ohana. So she quickly arranged to have the two of them meet. Just a year ago Ofer, 52, was critically wounded in a terrorist attack in Kiryat Arba when he was dispatched as a Magen David Adom medic to the scene of an ongoing incident.
“As someone in the process of rehabilitation here at Hadassah Mount Scopus, I can tell you that you will not believe how far you will go,” Ofer said to Menachem. “With solid willpower, with the support of family and with the people here who know how to motivate and advance you, every time you take another step and make another personal achievement, you will become stronger and return to yourself. The team here helped me discover my strength and trust in myself. They do holy work and today I work hard with them, give my all to the process, and they do everything for me.”
When Ofer began rehabilitation, the team at Hadassah met a man who inspired everyone around him. The Director of the Scopus Rehabilitation Center, Prof. Isabella Schwartz, says that Ohana is working very hard to gain back the mobility he lost.
“Ofer was very seriously injured in multiple ways,” explains Prof. Schwartz. “He was referred to the Rehabilitation Center at Hadassah Mount Scopus to begin the arduous work of rebuilding his body. The department’s staff—doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, social workers and occupational therapists—treated him daily with a great deal of patience and instilled in him self-belief and hope. He proved how strong he is and, indeed, went through and continues to undergo an amazing rehabilitation process. He inspires soldiers and civilians just beginning the rehabilitation process following their own serious injuries.”