The baby was fine, baruch Hashem, but I was a different story. I felt so ill, I didn’t have the strength to care for the baby. And as the days went by, it became more and more difficult for me to breathe.

On Thursday morning, a CT scan showed that I’d developed COVID-19 pneumonia, in which the lungs become severely inflamed and are unable to function. My baby was sent home, and I was moved to the ICU, where all through the night, the doctors stayed by my side, desperately trying to keep me alive.

Once they’d exhausted all options, they needed to intubate me. They put me in a medically induced coma — which has numerous potentially debilitating after-effects — and attached me to a ventilator to assist my breathing.

Within a few hours, it became clear that even a ventilator wasn’t enough. My lungs were shutting down. A cascade effect would soon set in — single organ failure leading to multiple organ failure, impacting all my vital organs one by one.

The only thing left to do was put me on an ECMO machine, which acts like an externally located lung, pumping the blood out of my body, removing the carbon dioxide from it, infusing it with oxygen, and then pumping it back into me. This would hopefully keep me alive in the interim and give my lungs a chance to rest and heal.

There are very few ECMO machines in London, and the specially trained team of surgeons and nurses who operate it are only available in a few hospitals. Potential patients are evaluated carefully to ensure they’re well enough to survive the surgery required to be attached to the machine and strong enough to survive the actual treatment.

Barnet Hospital put in a call to “the Brompton,” a specialist lung and heart hospital. They reviewed my medical records and decided I was a suitable candidate to receive ECMO treatment.

At precisely that time, the ECMO team was racing its only available machine toward another hospital. They made the fateful decision that I stood a better chance of survival on the machine than the other intended recipient. The ambulance carrying the machine turned around from where it was headed and raced toward me.

Yehuda got in touch with his rebbeim in Eretz Yisrael, and the Har Nof community we’d just left, to let them know the situation. They organized a round-the-clock Tehillim rotation, and my name was added to Tehillim lists locally and all over the world.

The hospital warned my husband that it could take up eight hours to prepare me for the surgery to attach me to the ECMO machine, perform it, and then transport me to the Brompton, so he shouldn’t expect to hear from them until late at night or early morning.

But baruch Hashem, after just three hours, between five and eight o’clock on Friday afternoon, the surgery was completed, and I was already safely settled at the Brompton. This was exactly the window of time in which women across Europe and Israel were lighting Shabbos candles and davening for me.

Meanwhile, Yehuda was home alone with the children. No one could come into the house because they were still in quarantine, but there was a shalom zachar to make. And a new baby to look after.

With incredible strength, Yehuda made a memorable Shabbos for the girls, all the while taking care of the new baby. They sang, waved from the window to guests who stopped by to wish mazel tov and left goody bags at the front door. At some point during the evening, the hospital called Yehuda and left him a message that I’d been successfully connected to the ECMO machine and was already at the Brompton in critical but stable condition.

From Shabbos until Tuesday, I was on the ECMO machine, and my blood was receiving oxygen exclusively from the machine. Our family, friends, acquaintances, community members, and complete strangers went into overdrive, davening, saying Tehillim, and taking on kabbalos.

On Tuesday, they lowered the level of oxygen they were giving me to see if my lungs were able to do any of the work, but there had been no improvement.

My siblings, uncles, and cousins braved the freezing weather and davened at my grandparents’ kevarim. On Wednesday, my sister Sheva organized brachos parties to be held in my zechus via Zoom.

That same day, Yehuda was told the baby was ready to have his bris. With 13 people in attendance and others participating on Zoom, our baby became a fully-fledged member of Klal Yisrael, and was named Dovid Avrohom.

I have no recollection of this, but according to Yehuda, before I’d become so sick, we’d discussed potential names for the baby, and I’d mentioned I wanted to name the baby after my maternal grandfather, Avrohom, and my late uncle, Dovid Avrohom. Although it had just been one of the names we’d discussed, somehow Yehuda understood just how important this was to me, even though I wasn’t there to confirm it with him, and decided to use that name.

Not long after the bris seudah, Yehuda received a phone call that our lift from Yerushalayim with all our possessions was on its way to our house! Now Yehuda had a wife in life-threatening condition, four young girls to look after, a post-bris newborn, and a house full of boxes.

Ribbono shel Olam! What next?

Next came a phone call from the hospital. Eliyahu Hanavi must have gone straight from the bris to my bedside at the Brompton, because my lungs suddenly started to work. They’d turned off the oxygen, and my blood oxygen levels remained stable.

On Thursday morning, they turned off the ECMO machine altogether, and I was still stable, and remained that way for the next 24 hours. Once patients are able to breath on their own for a 24-hour stretch without relying on the ECMO, they’re able to be surgically removed from it, and on Friday morning, I was taken off it altogether.

On Shabbos afternoon, Yehuda, who’d moved into his parents’ house, got a call telling him they’d taken me off the ventilator as well, and that I was responsive, indicating that I hadn’t experienced any brain damage from being oxygen deprived when my lungs weren’t functioning. While my situation was still unstable, I was out of immediate danger. Yehuda walked to my parents to share the good news.

This was an open neis. To go from having zero lung function to being able to breathe on my own, without experiencing any damage from being intubated or on the ECMO, in such a short span of time, is extremely rare.

The hospital staff started calling me “the miracle lady.”

Coming out of the induced coma was very difficult. It’s as though you have to pass through many levels of consciousness until you’re fully awake and alert. I was incredibly disoriented and mentally confused, extremely weak and nauseous, and couldn’t move. At this point, I was “responsive,” which meant that when they told me “squeeze my hand,” I was able to. I could also faintly whisper a word or two. That was it.

I had no idea what had happened. I didn’t know I’d had a baby, that I’d been at death’s door, that I’d been asleep for eight days.

When I was being attached to the ECMO, the hospital had asked Yehuda to email pictures of the family to hang opposite my bed to help orient me when I’d be awoken from my coma. Now that I was awake, I looked at the pictures. The people in them were familiar, but I wasn’t sure who they were. There was a photo of all my children, including the new baby. Who is that? I wondered. Is that my Shifra? It can’t be… she’s holding a baby. Who’s baby is that?

Over the next few intense and painful days, as I came to understand what was happening and continued to fight to survive, those pictures helped me pull through. I looked at them and thought, I have to hold on. I have to recover and get home to my family. I wept and silently begged Hashem, Don’t do this for me. Do it for my children. Don’t let them become orphans. Don’t let them live with that pain.

Having lain in bed for close to two weeks without moving, my muscles had become atrophied. They needed to be built up and relearn how to function to help enable me to sit up, stand, move my limbs, walk. This involved intense physical therapy.

The first session was brutal. I had a few painful incisions all over my body from my C-section and from the surgeries to put me on and off the ECMO machine. Moving hurt a lot, and made me feel dizzy and faint. The goal was to get me into a sitting position at the edge of the bed.

With the help of two physical therapists, one supporting me from behind, and the other from the front, I managed to get to the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. There were pins and needles in my legs, and I kept moaning, “I’m going to fall, I’m going to fall.” But the physical therapists were determined and supportive. And so brave. I don’t know how they did what they did. And I don’t know how I did it, either.

The next day I was transferred back to Barnet Hospital. As they wheeled me to an ambulance to transport me, the hospital corridor filled with nurses and doctors. Some of them were crying. “You’re a miracle! Come back and visit us,” they told me. I didn’t fully understand what the fuss was all about.

Back at Barnet, after I’d stabilized from the upheaval of the transfer, a nurse came over to where I was lying, unable to move, and hooked up to numerous machines. She was holding my phone.

“I’ve got a treat for you,” she said gently. “Do you want to speak to your husband?”

Huh? Husband? I hadn’t even thought of that. She put the phone on loudspeaker and held it next to me. I can hold a phone myself, I thought, only to come to the brutal realization that I actually couldn’t manage to coordinate my arm movements enough to take it from her.

Yehuda sounded strange. “Chavi, it’s so good to hear you,” he said “You have no idea how good it is to hear your voice.”

He asked me if I knew what day it was. I was so disoriented and groggy that for an instant, I wasn’t even sure. Then I remembered vaguely that I’d gone into the hospital on a Monday.

Yehuda told me that it was two weeks later. For some reason, this information hit me hard, physically and emotionally. I cried silently; I couldn’t get any sounds out. The nurse realized I very distressed. She pulled a chair next my bedside and sat with me for a long time, even after her shift ended, stroking my hand.

I’m tremendously grateful to that nurse. She looked into my eyes and asked if I knew what was going on. Then she very gently related some of my story.

“I have a baby?” I asked her a few times. I didn’t believe her. Couldn’t believe her. Couldn’t comprehend any of it.

“A gorgeous baby,” she said.

My bed in the ICU was the one closest to nurse’s station. In every other bed were men battling Covid or its complications. They were on oxygen tanks, or respirators, and required regular suctioning. It was a very difficult experience; up close, spiraling Covid is extremely scary to watch.

Throughout the first day back at Barnet, I was slowly weaned off oxygen. Within hours, I managed to reach a place breathing-wise that take other Covid patients days to reach. By the end of the day, I was completely off oxygen and was able to keep food and water down.

To be moved out of the ICU, I needed to be able to eat and drink on my own, without relying on feeding tubes and IVs for nourishment and hydration. But even bringing a cup of water to my lips was very challenging, as I had little strength, and my eye-hand coordination was poor. One doctor noticed me struggling to bring a cup to my mouth to drink.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

I thanked at her and commented, “You don’t even know me.”

She looked at me and said, “Yes, I do know you. We didn’t think we’d see you again. My colleague and good friend Dr. Nuala stopped at my house last Friday night and cried her heart out. She told me, ‘We worked so hard on this young mum of five. She just isn’t going to make it. I’m so scared for her.’ Dr. Nuala’s been in the ICU for 25 years. She’s seen everything under the sun. That was first time I’d ever seen her cry like that.”

Another doctor with sandy-colored hair and twinkling eyes kept popping into the ICU and saying, “I just have to check again that you’re really back from the Brompton.” She couldn’t believe I’d actually survived and come off the ECMO so quickly.

Dr. Nuala was on duty when the all clear came through that a bed in the ward was available. When she heard a few minutes later that it was being given to someone else, she was a lioness, and got on the phone, fighting for me to get it. She then proceeded to do all the paperwork I needed to get out of there, even though it wasn’t her job. She kept up a lively stream of, “Oh, I’ve not done this for years. Am I doing this right? What else do we need?”

After taking a photo with me, she wheeled me out of the ICU, singing and dancing. On the way, she stopped at the staff rooms where the senior consultants were headquartered. They’d all been deployed to try and stabilize me when my lungs stopped functioning.

“This is Mrs. Teller,” she introduced me. “Remember her?”

I was put in a room on the regular ward with five older women. I was desperate to see my husband, my girls, and my new baby. I needed help to do absolutely everything. Usually when people are that ill, they have a family member or friend at their side all the time, but as this was a Covid ward, no visitors were allowed. I felt so alone.

I knew that until I was able to sit up unassisted and walk from the bed to the bathroom, I wouldn’t be able to be released from the hospital. I made the decision to push myself hard — emotionally and physically — so I’d be able to get out as quickly as possible. Even though I was an emotional wreck, I put on a good show when the psychiatrists did their rounds, promising myself that once I was out, I could allow myself to collapse, to rest, and to weep.

Knowing deep down that I was insane for doing what I was about to do, I pulled the “call button” wires close to me and started the nightmarish process of sitting up by myself and inching to the edge of the bed. It was incredibly difficult because my abdominal muscles were so weak and I was in tremendous pain from all my surgery scars.

It took a lot of thinking: What muscle do I move now? After a lot of time and extreme effort, eventually I was sitting up at the edge of the bed and then — shaking, wobbly, and unsteady — I was standing.

The next day I managed to get up again and was able to slowly, slowly shuffle to the bathroom. When the physical therapist entered my room for our first session and saw me standing at the doorway, she left the room to check with the nurses that she’d come to treat the right patient. She didn’t believe it was possible that a few days after coming off the ECMO machine, I was able to stand.

Now that I could sit up and make it to the bathroom on my own, I begged the doctors to discharge me. “Nothing in your file indicates you’re medically fit to leave,” the doctors told me.

I tried to hold back my tears. I was devastated. I spoke very strongly to one of the doctors and said, “I need to go home and see my family for my mental health. You have no reason to keep me here. I’m able to meet the requirements to be discharged. It isn’t good for me to be here.”

He was shocked at my assertiveness, but couldn’t really argue. I was right.

But the battle wasn’t over. Then came the rehab center saga.

The hospital wanted to send me to a rehab center in the countryside an hour and a half away from London, where no visitors were allowed and the environment was neither kosher nor Jewish.

Bikur Cholim in Stamford Hill had opened a Covid rehab center at the beginning of the pandemic. But the rehab center had to meet the various standards of care I desperately needed, and the hospital wasn’t familiar with Bikur Cholim. Yehuda, Mrs. Yocheved Eiger, and Mrs. Breindy Goldberg of Bikur Cholim spoke numerous times with the staff at Barnet, convincing them that they had good enough facilities to care for me. The doctors were impressed enough with them to release me to their care.

Leaving was an excruciatingly slow process. Everything took too long — the discharge paperwork, organizing my medications. There just seemed to be one excuse after another about why things weren’t moving. I was ready to leave on Thursday morning, but on Thursday afternoon, things still weren’t ready, and the administrative staff had already left for the day, so I needed to stay overnight.

At that point, I wasn’t in a good place emotionally. I’d pushed myself beyond my capabilities to be in a good enough state to leave, and I was so exhausted all I wanted to do was sleep and weep. Now that was being delayed, and I had to put on a brave face, or they wouldn’t discharge me. I was angry at everyone, including Hashem.

In retrospect, I think the hospital was too scared to let me go, so they were procrastinating with the discharge process. My survival didn’t make sense, and they were anxious about releasing someone who had been on an ECMO machine just six days ago.

On Thursday evening, Sarit, a frum midwife I didn’t know, came to visit me. She told me she’d been present during my C-section and proceeded to show me footage of a group of 80 women doing hafrashas challah in my zechus.

“And this was only one group,” she said.

“But I don’t even know 80 people in London!” I said. “Why would all these people do this? I just moved here.” I wondered if I would have done the same for them.

On Friday morning, after a signing the discharge papers, my brother Eli came in a Hatzalah ambulance to transport me to the rehab center. I was overjoyed to see a family member; it had been close to three weeks being isolated in the hospital.

As Eli wheeled me out of the ward, the doctors came to say goodbye. “You’re what keeps us going,” said one doctor. “We’ve seen so much loss and grief. Survivors like you, stories like yours, give us strength to continue. You have to come back to say hello.”

Because of my numerous incisions, the ride to the rehab center was painful. I clutched one of my wounds the entire 50-minute ride; it hurt at every bump. When we got to the center, Yehuda, the girls, the new baby, and my father were waiting to greet me. I’d warned Yehuda not to let the girls run up and hug me because of my incisions. They hung back, a little uncertain.

There are no words that can do justice to describing seeing my precious girls, my husband, my father, the Doona with a little baby inside being wheeled toward me as I climbed out of the ambulance.

The tears flowed.

There were mere hours until Shabbos. The elevator was broken, so Eli carried the wheelchair I was in up the stairs. The Eigers, who lived across the street from the center, offered to host Yehuda and the baby for Shabbos. The girls went to my in-laws, and Yehuda went home to get Shabbos things for him and baby. He got back to the rehab center just in time for candle lighting.

Yehuda put the baby next to me. I couldn’t hold him because I was still so weak, and my eye-hand coordination was still off; I could just about feed myself.

On Shabbos, I crashed. I cried and slept a lot.

The care I received at the rehab center was phenomenal. I was there for four weeks, and they took care of every one of my needs. They set up and paid for follow-up appointments with the best private doctors in London, and organized transportation back and forth. There were wonderful physical therapists who worked with me so that I could learn to walk again, to climb up and down stairs with my oxygen levels steady and my blood pressure stable.

I remember the first time I ventured out for a walk. There was fresh air, a blue sky, trees, people. It was wonderful. Before, I’d never paid attention to the bumps and potholes on the ground; now each one posed a tremendous challenge. I took pigeon steps the whole way to the post box on the street corner. It was a huge achievement.

I started making real progress, even though it was frustratingly slow. Soon enough, I no longer needed a wheelchair, but when I went out for a walk, I saw stars in my eyes and my lungs hurt. I was so fragile, it was scary. I could do everything… but I couldn’t.

During my recovery period, I cried endlessly. The experience I’d undergone was overwhelming. As the fog in my mind cleared up, memories of what I’d gone through when I was unconscious started to filter through. I had a few out-of-body experiences, where I saw myself lying on a hospital bed, and had a bird’s-eye view of the room.

In one that was particularly powerful, I was being frantically wheeled toward a helicopter about to take off, my husband and father running on either side of the hospital bed, encouraging me by saying, “Come on, Chavi. We can do this. Hold on. Come on. We’re almost there. Hold on, Chavi.”

Behind them was a huge crowd of people running with us toward the helicopter. Baruch Hashem, we made it to the helicopter as it was lifting off.

In another one, I was lying on the hospital bed, and my parents and another couple, very close friends of theirs, were sitting on one side of the bed, and a group of terrorists dressed in black were on the other. My parents and their friends were negotiating with terrorists to get me back.

There was also information about people I knew that was incredibly clear to me, like a sharp flash of lightning. I felt strongly that I had to pass my understandings onto them. I knew that if Hashem wanted them to know this, He would arrange for them to know it, but that it was a zechus for me to be the one to relay it.

For example, there was a family I knew who’d lost a loved one to COVID-19, and the loss had been very difficult for them. Somehow when I woke up from my coma, I just knew that this person who was niftar was a very special person and was in a really good place now.

I also had insights that showed me such a different perspective on things, I was blown away. For instance, there’s a woman I know who’s very difficult to get along with, and I’d had some interactions with her that had hurt me. Somehow, I understood that there was nothing personal going on — she respected me a lot, she simply had severe social skills deficits and because of that, didn’t know how to develop healthy relationships.

Western medicine usually attributes any visions a person has when they’re unconscious to be hallucinations. I was often filled with a lot of anxiety and self-doubt about whether there was anything to what I’d seen or if it was mere hallucinations. But as time went on, I realized I was privy to know things I could never have known had I not been “up there,” and this couldn’t be attributed to hallucinations.

When the pain was overwhelming, my mind spun with questions to Hashem: “Why didn’t You keep me ‘up there?’ I would have much rather stayed. Why didn’t You just take me?” And, the worst one of all — it haunts me every day — “Why did You send me back?”

It was difficult to adjust to being back in This World. Having had some interaction with the spiritual world, it felt so wrong, so trivial to be engaging in the physical world. I had to keep reminding myself that Hashem made me a human being, not a malach in Shamayim, and that eating and drinking, the basic acts of living, were necessary, even a mitzvah.

Then there was my sensation of awe at this gift from Hashem. My hands! My legs! I can move them! My body works! I wish I could have held onto this feeling for longer.

I owe so much hakaras hatov to all those who took on kabbalos, who did maasim tovim in my merit, and who helped my family during that period, who beseeched Hashem on my behalf that I should survive the virus. Total strangers davened for me, and people who I hadn’t been in touch with for 15 years made contact and told me they’d davened on my behalf. I believe that in my vision of a crowd of people propelling my hospital bed toward that helicopter was a representation of all those actions, and the force it generated sent me back to Olam Hazeh.

Often we feel that we pour our hearts out in tefillah, but our prayers go nowhere, and we don’t get the answers we hoped for, or any answer at all. I’m living proof that tefillah and mitzvos have tremendous impact in Shamayim; and that if Hashem decides, tefillah and good deeds can literally change someone’s destiny.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 745)