Of the roughly 2.5 million students scheduled to start the school year tomorrow, some will have to wait a little longer before meeting or getting to know friends and teachers until after they are discharged from the various hospitals where they are admitted.
Opening the school year: 2.5 million children return to schools and kindergartens // Photo: Moshe Ben-Simhon, Yaniv Zohar
Kim Levin, almost 7 years old, was supposed to start second grade at the Sprinzak School in Kiryat Gat tomorrow and return to meet her friends. But for the past week she has been hospitalized in the Pediatric Department B at Shamir Assaf Harofeh Hospital, and will only be able to join her friends later.
"I love learning Hebrew," Kim says, "and also art," she adds as she sits in the pediatric ward at Assaf Harofeh Hospital with a drawing block and pencil paints and draws drawings for the doctors in the department. "I miss my first grade teacher, May," she shares.
"It's not easy to explain to her that she won't go back to school."
Kim suffers from kidney failure, fever, abdominal pain and increased inflammatory markers, and is being examined medically for fear of contracting infectious diseases. This is her third hospitalization since May and she really misses home, school and her routine.
Her mother, Dana, who accompanies her all the time, says, "This hospitalization is different and Kim is already exhausted. It's not easy to explain to her that she won't go back to school on Friday, there's really no preparation for it. The school is very inclusive of her and tries to help. During the hospitalization, they were in contact with us.
Assaf Harofeh Hospital, Photo: Yossi Zeliger
"Her teacher asked if we would only like to bring her for one hour on Friday, for the atmosphere. We hope she can, but we're afraid she'll get some kind of virus and her condition will get worse. Until we finish the diagnosis, we don't want her to come to school."
At the hospital, Kim's routine consists mainly of blood tests, ultrasounds and other medical examinations. "I don't have any friends here," she says sadly. "In my class, my friends are nicer."
At home, a new satchel with a unicorn drawing, a pencil case with the same drawing and unicorn pencils awaits her. Everything is still packed and waiting for her to recover and go back to school.
"She wants to get her bag ready, she knows her friends are going back to school and it's hard," says her mother Dana. "We try to be optimistic and think about her return to school and routine."
Wrong? We'll fix it! If you find a mistake in the article, please share with us