Ziva Kostiner, the mother of David who was seriously injured in Gaza, spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News about coping with her son’s injury and how her husband, Rabbi Zvi, head of the Mitzpe Ramon yeshiva, continued to teach during this period.
Kostiner says that "Injured people are in a world of their own; a completely different story, that seems to never end, and we don't know when it will end.”
"The lightly injured are still going to rehabilitation months after the injury, they are still doing physiotherapy, and are not back on track. These are the lightly injured.”
"David our son was injured eight months ago and at first we didn't realize the severity of his injury, because all his organs were intact, everything was in place. A piece of shrapnel pierced his neck and paralyzed his whole body. He had on a helmet, he was wearing a protective vest, a really good boy, keeping to all the rules and procedures, and this small fragment entered his neck and crushed the first two vertebrae of his spine.”
We do not understand anything about medicine and then we got to the hospital, we realized that his body was paralyzed. He was not breathing, not speaking, of course not eating anything. He was just looking at us and not understanding what happened to him."
"It was an almost fatal injury, everyone was sure that he was dead, everyone else was killed. They started crying until sometime later they realized that, thank God, they had managed to save his life."
We are extremely grateful to the members of the medical team who stopped his bleeding and transferred him to the helicopter, where they had to stop his bleeding again. I have no idea who they are. One day we will find out who they are, and we will be able to thank them."
On coping with the situation, she says: "I worked a bit at the Ulpana and I told my supervisor that in a few days I'll be back. She told me, ‘Ziva, you probably don't understand what is happening.’”
Kostiner says that at some stage she decided to return to her clinic, “I am going back to give therapy. I said I would remember that there is also a Ziva, and not only ‘David’s mother.’”