All Syrian citizen Kholoud hoped for was to arrive in Gaza with her husband and children safe and sound after fleeing war in the Syrian city of Daraa until they reached Gaza and started experiencing siege and suffering.
Years passed in which the family of Amer Foura 41 lived a semi-stable life after Foura got a temporary job by the government of Gaza and after the 2014 war he began a new chapter of suffering as his wife fell ill.
Kholoud Al-Hamoud 40 suffers from a neurologic disease according to the doctors which paralyzed her and made her suffer from difficulty in breathing. Thus she has been hospitalized at Al-Wafaa hospital. She is in an urgent need for treatment which will likely make her feel better.
Hospitalized
The sound of the artificial respirator overcomes the words of her husband Amer Foura at the hospital room that has become her permanent residence with her husband and five children.
“I came to Gaza five years ago from Daraa where I was born and lived as a Palestinian refugee. I fled the war in Syria to Egypt and then entered Gaza after I refused to ride the sea and risk my family’s life in attempt to migrate to Europe” Foura told the PIC reporter.
After the 2014 war Foura’s wife began to feel pain in her hand which made her visit many doctors without discovering why she lost the ability to move her hand and her situation got worse and she became no longer able to move any of her limbs.
He adds “After a while a doctor decided that she suffered from a neurological disease. I called upon all the officials to provide her with the needed treatment but after months of waiting her health deteriorated and she was clinically dead for five days. We traveled to a hospital in the 1948 occupied territories where she began to improve.”
The doctors made a hole in her neck to breathe and recommended using a special electric-powered respirator to help her breathe and decided she needed a frequent blood- transfusion. She was barely able to talk and eat.
Foura returned to Gaza and his financial condition was very bad as he was unemployed. He had to stay at Al-Wafa Hospital in Al-Zahra city and in sympathy with his condition the hospital allocated a room for him to live with his wife and children.
Threatened with Death
The family room includes three beds one of which is allocated for his wife that Amer looks after throughout the day to keep the artificial respirator working while books and stationery for his children in the secondary and primary schools are scattered throughout the room.
He adds “We live here. If electricity goes off for a few minutes my wife might die. The doctors tell me she has a blood virus. She needs plasma that is available in the 1948 occupied territories but not in Gaza.”
The PIC correspondent learnt after contacting doctors and specialists who followed her case and coordinated her entry to the Israeli hospitals that she is still listed to be treated at the Israeli Ichilov hospital at the neurology department yet the Israeli authorities did not yet fix a date for her entry so far.
Renewed suffering
Foura describes the life of his family as tragic; his children lived for years in the hospital and were deprived of a normal life making everything tough for them.
“The month of Ramadan is difficult and Eid is difficult. Everything is difficult. Although the hospital’s management and nurses take care of us and deal with us in an excellent way yet still I feel the bitterness of life.”
Foura’s eldest son Ahmad had to work to support his family while the father had been staying with his wife taking care of her for three years. He has always been in touch with his and her family in Daraa.
Dhargam Foura’s other 17-year-old who studies at the high school arrives in during the interview puts his bag aside and sits next to his mother refusing to talk out of bitterness due to the situation of his mother.
Dargham takes care of his younger siblings especially Sa’ad who is in the fourth grade and teaches them. He believes just like his mother that there is no use to plea anymore for help.
Foura renewed his demand on all Palestinian officials as reconciliation is maturing to help treat his wife because her condition began to deteriorate and doctors told him that hospitals in the 1948 occupied territories are likely to save her life threatened by death.
