Shani Moduel suffered a severe multi-systemic injury after a vehicle crashed into the car she was travelling in on Road 40. She lost consciousness and was rescued from the car minutes before it caught fire.
Shani: “It is me in the photograph with my beloved daughters Noa, Neta and Yael. A photograph that has taken just before the Corona outbreak. The first night with mummy after two months that I hadn’t been at home at all!! One photograph that commemorates supreme happiness. What fun it was to go home.
“I had a huge miracle. I survived a terrible car accident. To this day I can’t believe that I made it out in one piece. In retrospect when I think about things it is very difficult to take what happened on board.
“19.12.2019 – on my way back from a work trip to Eilat with two other employees in the car. I sat in the front, next to the driver. Laughter, talking and suddenly, from nowhere, a side on collision. Boom! An accident that changed my life without recognition. We were on Road 40, close to the Shizafon army base. I remember the moment precisely. A crazy noise, the car in front of us catching fire and we were in the second car. My consciousness is cloudy and suddenly hands are stretched out to me, open the safety belt, pull me out of the car, seconds before it also catches fire. They transfer me to hospital. And that’s it. After that I dove inwards and I don’t remember anything.
“I spent one month sedated and ventilated in the ICU with a severe multi-systemic injury. Haemorrhaging in my abdomen, chest, fractures in my pelvis, legs, ribs. When I awoke I had totally lost any sense of time. The saddest thing was when they told me I had missed my daughter’s birthday and also my own. I was in pain, very weak and mostly confused and didn’t know what to expect.
“’You are moving to rehabilitation’” they told me. What is rehabilitation anyway? What am I supposed to do with that? All that I wanted was to get my life back, to stand on my feet and start walking.
“Six months I have been in the rehabilitation process at Reuth Hospital. I was a wreck, Totally without any independence. Disabled. After a month of laying in bed without moving in ICU I couldn’t move any muscles in my body.
“It’s funny but as regards my daughters – their mother travelled to Eilat and didn’t return home for two months. During the first months I worked very hard on rehabilitation. The successes came in small doses but every such success was the whole world. One week after I arrived, new patients were admitted on the ward and suddenly I found myself offering them strength and encouragement. I thought to myself how can I, who only arrived here a week ago, how did I already have something to give of myself. That is the perspective that you get when you are in such a process and find the strength also to help others and to motivate them.
“I used to wake up every night, thinking a lot about the accident. We always say to ourselves that extreme events change our lives. Until you undergo such an awful experience, it is actually impossible to understand just how much. Happiness comes from such little things. I managed to do something during treatment on my own, I coped with another task, here I am already almost independent.
“At the end of July I was discharged from Reuth Hospital, a graduate of full time hospitalization and ambulatory care here. People who see me say that the light has come back to my eyes. Throughout the rehabilitation I did everything to come out of it as empowered as I could be.
“Reuth Hospital has such a committed and dedicated team and this is place to give them a huge thank you. They saw me in the most terrible of situations and they lifted me up, they gave me the strength to fight and to work hard in rehabilitation. It was quite a journey.
“After the discharge from hospital I am waiting to go back to work and to my routine life. I know that the path is not over but I can already see the light and that is the most important thing”.
