Rules! Usually beneficial but sometimes to the disadvantage of those they are attempting to help. Overriding them. Impossible! Impossible unless a caring, creative entity comes on the scene.
A family in Tzefas – all corona patients. During their illness, the small daughter suffered third-degree burns. She was hospitalized and her condition was serious and worsening. The child? Alone in a strange, frightening environment without the emotional support of Mommy. The parents? Terrified and unable to visit their precious daughter. The emotional torment was agonizing. They knew that a mother’s touch was a powerful medication to recovery. Yet there were those normally beneficial but now so frustrating rules. They called Ezer Mizion, “There’s probably nothing you can do but we don’t know where else to turn …”
Ezer Mizion’s social service team took up the challenge. They met with head of the ICU department. They met with director of the hospital’s corona system. There were suggestions, rejections and more suggestions until a suitable solution was found. The mother was brought by ambulance with full precautions taken by all concerned and then hospitalized together with her daughter in the pediatric ICU corona ward. A welcoming, celebratory supper, provided by Ezer Mizion, awaited her arrival. Corona brings it with a lot of complex situations but with Ezer Mizion’s imaginative, out-of-box thinking combined with its deep empathy towards the plight of another, even the most hopeless situation can be resolved.
The sentiment is catchy and permeates all the divisions of Ezer Mizion. The Cancer Support Division normally provides many a fun trip, retreat, event to put a smile on those who haven’t smiled in days. Corona put an end to all of these and the division was stymied. But not for long. “Happening at Your House” is a new service born in the wake of covid-19.
Many of these families have not even gone to parks or places where they might be exposed to other people. “Happening at Your House”, as the name implies, brings a fun happening to the homes of quarantined families who must be especially cautious due to the compromised immune system of their cancer patient child.
Introducing excitement and bringing positive energies into the homes, Ezer Mizion staff and volunteers bring inflatable trampolines, a bouncing castle, jumping house and moonwalks along with a popcorn machine, a cotton candy machine, a waffle iron, a variety of activity kits, with all supplies included.
Everything takes place at the families’ homes, with the nuclear family members, music and good cheer.
The project has been running since August 2020 and hundreds of children and their families have benefited from this fun initiative. The excited feedback that has come in from the families — who have been in preventative quarantine for a very long time to avert danger to life — is extremely moving and attests to the urgent need for this important project.
