When the cameras for this interview leave the room, she removes the "rags", in her language - that is, the white doctor's robe.
Oppressing her with him.
He was dressed only for the sake of representation in photography.
Every day, when Dr. Yael Mozar-Glazberg (50) treats the cell, she is dressed like a human being.
Maybe it's so because she knows both sides of the barricade well.
On the one hand, a pediatric gastroenterologist and director of the liver transplant service at the Schneider Center for Pediatrics, and on the other hand a mother of Roi (17), Tamar (14) and Naama (7) - with Roi dealing with illness since birth.
"There are people sitting on either side of the table, and they all have troubles and complex life stories," he says with a shiny damp eye in her blue eyes - and pulls aside a strand of silver hair.
"I bring with me to the clinic our experiences as parents of a chronically ill child, and I also receive from my patients strengths, how to cope on my own. In the last six months we have been well challenged. Also a rejection of this implant. "
Photo: Moshe Ben Simhon
• • •
She grew up in Afula, to an old family of pioneers.
Her great-grandfather, Mordechai Saltsky, immigrated from Philadelphia in the 1920s to settle the valley.
Her parents - Arnon, an engineer, and Neta, a nurse and psychotherapist - were unable to tame the youngest daughter, Yael, a wild girl who did not finish high school.
“I loved the viewers, I loved climbing trees,” she explains.
"I had an affair with the water reservoir on the outskirts of Afula. I liked to watch the birds migrate through binoculars."
After her military service as an operations clerk in the Air Force, she migrated overseas.
"I traveled the world for a year, and when I returned to Israel I was not accepted for a preparatory course, so I went on a trip to India. My mother said that a course in English medicine was opened in Budapest, Hungary. I completed my matriculation and was accepted.
She has already closed an internship in adult surgery at Beilinson ("I like to cut"), but the last few months of her internship in the pediatric ward have been a sheer pleasure for her.
"I owe my professional life to Prof. Shai Ashkenazi, who was the director of the pediatric department. He converted my religion from surgery to pediatrics. At the end of the internship, he told me that it suited me very well."
Indeed appropriate.
She just shines next to children.
The toddlers give her a hand and look at her in confidence, and the teenagers send her admiring looks and sweeten secrets in her ears.
"She's more of a friend than a doctor," embraces 17-year-old Hadas Goodshmitt, who has been treated at Schneider's Liver Clinic since the age of six.
They giggle together about Hadas' dream of finding a redheaded friend, and then Hadas gets serious: "I have an autoimmune disease that has hit my liver. Today I am balanced with pills. Dr. Mozer is an amazing doctor, and always with a smile.
You can share it with everyone, you can cry with her and she contains.
Thanks to the connection with her I want to study a profession in the field of medicine.
Maybe even be like her. "
Many of her patients are accompanied by a goat from age zero, from a disease that was discovered near their birth.
"When a severe liver disease is discovered after birth, the parents go through a complex emotional upheaval, so there is a whole lot of emotional accompaniment done in art by the whole staff.
"The array of liver patients and liver transplant recipients at the Gastro Institute is made up of many carpets, and all floors of the building have full cooperation. In the end, these are children who go with you for a lifetime - and sometimes you see them more than your family members."
With 17-year-old Hadas Godshmit, accompanied by Dr. Mozer from the age of 6. "I want to be a doctor like her when I grow up," Photo: Arik Sultan
Each year, a liver is transplanted into about 20 children at Schneider.
Half of the transplant recipients receive a liver lobe from their parents, the other half receive a donation from the dead.
Yael describes children undergoing liver transplants "like manicures and pedicures", who, although they need to continue to be treated for the transplanted liver, simply continue with a new life of routine.
"But there are kids who go through it in a much more complicated and complex configuration."
Yuval Benzion-Melamed, only 4 years old, went through the more complicated route.
Her sweet smile does not betray the anguish that was a smooth dose.
She sits in the little green chair in Yael's room, draws and plays calmly.
Feels at home.
"I remember the first phone call from Yuval's parents," Yael recalls.
"I was at home, in the kitchen. They were in another hospital, but they recommended us. Three days later Yuval had already undergone Qassay surgery, intended for children with biliary atresia (a rare disease of biliary obstruction; 11A) to give the liver more functional time. .
For some, it can take up to a decade, but it is usually a bridge for the first or second transplant of their lives. "
Moran Melamed, Yuval's mother, remembers well the first time she met Dr. Mozer with her daughter. “It was in the ward hallway.
She came immediately and told us: 'I will be with you until retirement' - and she has not left us since. "
Yael: "Moran was postpartum, a mother for the first time, and already has to deal with the fact that Yuval, her stunning child, is ill. At the age of four months, we realized that there was no choice, and that we had to move on to the next stage - liver transplantation."
At the age of seven months, Yuval underwent a transplant.
The liver donor was the mother.
"Transplantation is a crazy drama," Moran describes.
"Because I donated the liver lobe, I could not be near Yuval after the very complicated surgery she underwent. For a while I was also not allowed to lift it. I do not think I would have been able to get through it without the support I received here from Yael and the entire staff."
After the transplant, due to various complications, Yuval's condition deteriorated - until she reached intensive care.
Her parents had already seen in the eyes of the doctors the creeping doubt and despair.
"But from Dr. Mozer we got the message that there is no such thing as giving up," says Moran. "As long as there is hope - hold on to it, despite the very, very difficult moments."
After Yuval's condition improved, she continued to be closely monitored at Dr. Mozer's clinic, first once a week and now once every two months. Moran: "For Yuval, to come to Schneider is to come for a fun day.
After all the suffering she has experienced here, it's really not obvious.
We really won. "
• • •
I ask Dr. Strange what happens when you are not successful, and immediately a shadow passes over her face, her eyes gleam and her voice trembles. “Wow, it is not simple.
I carry with me throughout my life those who do not.
I keep in touch with some of the families over the years.
When a new child is born in the family, I get pictures of them.
There is a mother I call on Rosh Hashanah and at a memorial service.
Is a very powerful lesson in my life.
You learn a lot along the way, carry a lot on your shoulders. "
It is clear to her that the lack of partitions between her and her patients and the attempt to have them not only a doctor but also a psychic supporter, intensify her emotional involvement - and the pain of loss as it happens.
"The credit should be given to my parents. When I graduated from medical school, my mother, who had been involved in bereavement for years as part of her job, told me, 'Never stay with mind and heart, never forget it along the way.'
"We all have a need to set boundaries, but I personally feel it's much easier for me not to put partitions. It obviously requires me to do parting processes from patients who are at the end of the road. I realized this after experiencing a patient's first death. I realized I also need to find out with whom Talk to who to unload, both inside the hospital and at home with the family. "
According to Yael, what keeps her in the difficult moments are the dry data according to which many transplanted children's lives are saved.
"The statistics are amazing - 95 percent survival per patient. Some patients need two transplants, and in rare cases even three, but there are no concessions. This is a bloody war, literally."
One of the most exciting moments Yael has experienced in the past year has been in a liver transplant for a three-month-old baby.
"This baby came from another hospital, with liver failure that deteriorated rapidly, within 48 hours. His parents are a lovely, repentant couple, and this thing landed on them all at once.
"We had to explain to them that the healthy child they gave birth to, and that he already has several siblings, needs a liver transplant quickly. In this case, the father donated, because the mother was right after the birth. It was not easy to recruit them. At first there was a lot of resistance. As a team we decided to go through a very challenging procedure: to transplant a liver to a baby who weighs four kilograms, and who is ill with an unknown disease that it is not clear if it will appear in the new implant.
"In retrospect it was a magical and good decision. The baby is already eight months old, and he is stunning, smiling, growing, developing and has already returned home. His family has mobilized all the resources, walked the path with us and risen out of the difficulty."
Parents do not always cooperate.
In such cases, Yael also knows how to be angry.
Just this week she shouted on the phone about parents who did not come for the inspection on time - and thereby endangered the child.
Once in every 20 years at Schneider she had to send police, to force parents to bring their sick child for treatment.
"I turned to a welfare officer, and the boy arrived at the hospital with police escort. These are rare, but very exhausting cases."
For Yael, the formative moments are those in which children who have reached a neurological state to the point of coma, due to liver failure, wake up after the liver transplant.
"We have a beautiful and smart 16-year-old girl who underwent liver transplant surgery after being in a coma for 72 hours. It took her a week to wake up after the transplant, but she woke up.
"In these moments we know we have made the right choice, we have saved lives. It gives all the reward for the hard work. It also gives the power to say sometimes: 'I was wrong, my mistake' - because there are more successes than mistakes. I would not choose any other profession today. There is so much love in him. "
• • •
She found her private love when she returned to Israel from Budapest in 2000. She then declared that she would not marry a doctor or a permanent man, but married - of course - to a military doctor, Alon Glazberg (49), then a doctor in the Walnut Patrol and now a professor and lieutenant general, chief medical officer "To.
"Alon treated a wounded man who later studied medicine in Budapest, a year below me. That guy drove my mind crazy that I would meet Alon. In order for him to leave me alone, I agreed to one meeting."
This time it was enough for both parties to be enchanted, and since their marriage in 2002 they are together, with a demanding profession and a common challenge of raising children.
Once, in a job interview for one of the hospitals, they asked her: "And what will happen if, God forbid, you get pregnant?".
Yael was not confused and replied that she had a wide and cohesive enough family to take care of her children if necessary.
"Obviously it's not easy for two doctors with such a big commitment to work to raise children. I originally wanted five children. We went through fertility treatments for years, and that's how the two big ones were born. At 43, after all the treatments failed, we gave up - and then I got pregnant naturally. "Like someone living in the desert, I only found out I was pregnant when I was four months old," she smiles.
Over the years, her mother came twice a week from a distance to help raise the children, and at a time when Roi's eldest illness was getting worse, Yael left work for a while until he recovered.
Today they are at the peak of the renovation of the house in Petah Tikva, near the hospital, to fit it in the wheelchair that Roy used.
"In the midst of the great difficulty of chronic illness, our goal is to raise our children and bring them out the door as independent adults, who love life and know how to take care of themselves. Let them know how to succeed and move on - all with the understanding that no illness will stop you as long as you live and kick."
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