Healing from a Burn

Name: The Maik family

Location at the time of the miracle: San Diego California

Location today: Ramat Shlomo Jerusalem Israel

Years since the miracle: 6

Mrs. Maik (pronounced “Mike”) relates:

My son Shlomo was almost one when he crawled over to a table without anyone noticing pulled the tablecloth down and overturned a bowl of boiling hot soup onto himself. He started screaming in pain and I realized immediately that he’d gotten badly burned. We called an ambulance and rushed to the emergency room with Shlomo screaming the entire time.

In the hospital they told us he had 13 third-degree burns (the worst type) and he had to be taken to a nearby hospital with a special burn unit. We had real Hashgachah because that burn unit was the top burn unit in the entire area.

Shlomo was bandaged up and in terrible pain. The doctors in the burn unit wanted to do skin grafting what they usually do for such a case but other people told me that grafting could cause terrible complications. But Shlomo was so little. Would his skin start to heal on its own?

My husband knew of a special burn cream in Eretz Yisrael. He asked someone to ship it to us overnight. The specialists in our hospital didn’t think it would help because Shlomo’s burns were so bad but they agreed to let us try it.

We applied the burn cream every time Shlomo’s bandages were changed and a few days later when the doctors wanted to reschedule him for skin grafting they found that his burns were starting to heal by themselves. It was a neis! The cream had helped!

Within two weeks Shlomo was released from the hospital. This was unheard of for a baby with as many burns as he had. If we’d had the skin grafting he would have been in the hospital for much longer and could have been badly scarred.

Once we were home we had to change Shlomo’s bandages every day and give him medicine to make sure his skin didn’t get infected. By Chanukah two months later he was completely healed. We were so grateful for the nissim Hashem had done for us that we made a big seudas hoda’ah in our shul. We showed a video of Shlomo during his recovery and thanked the entire community for helping us out.

Every year since then we make a celebration on Chanukah to publicize the neis all over again.

The Maik children remember:

Baruch Dov (now 12): I remember going to visit Shlomo in the hospital. We were so happy when he came home. We had a very big seudas hoda’ah. My zeidy came and brought a lot of presents. Shlomo was covered with creams but everyone was so happy that he was okay. There was food and dancing.

Devora (now 10): Shlomo in the hospital for a long time. We were so happy that he could come home and that he was healthy. It was so scary when he was in the hospital. Every year we do something in our house. We dance and sing. (Excerpted from Mishpacha Jr. Issue 689)