Disabled by three severe strokes, Salwa Abed Rabu, a 58-year-old journalist from East Jerusalem, has been receiving treatment in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Hadassah Hospital Mount Scopus three times a week for the past year. She has now regained 70 percent of her functioning and is working hard to restore the rest.

Terror victim Aluma Mekaitan Guertzenstein spent six years in rehabilitation at Hadassah, beginning at age 17, after a suicide bomber boarded the bus she rode to school. Over 30 pieces of shrapnel ripped through her right arm and leg, and a rusty half-inch metal fragment pierced her brain. While she has largely recovered speech and mobility, she has foot drop in her right leg, and her right hand is paralyzed. Nevertheless, now age 34, she recently gave birth to her first child, learning from Hadassah how to care for her new baby despite her limitations.

Dvir Teitelbaum, who has Guillain-Barre syndrome, tirelessly “walks” on Hadassah’s new Lokomat treadmill, with the goal that this srepetitive walking pattern will help his brain and spinal cord reroute damaged neural signals.

“Rehabilitation is a supremely optimistic field,” says Dr. Isabella Schwartz, head of Hadassah’s Rehabilitation Department. “It’s about well-being and quality of life. In restoring the patients’ ability to function, you restore their will to live.”

Hadassah’s rehabilitation department opened on the Mount Scopus campus in 1976. A new, expanded facility--an initiative of Hadassah International--is now under construction. 

Read the full article in Hadassah Magazine and learn more about the patients’ improved quality of life and about their therapists, who work with great devotion to help all the patients reach their personal goals.