Widowhood, Cancer, and a Baby Born in a Hospital Parking Garage

Sapir Hodaia Gabay, 33, from Beit Yitzhak, says the last five and a half months have brought her unimaginable loss and survival. In that time, she lost her husband, Haim, after his fourth battle with cancer, discovered an aggressive breast tumor while pregnant, and gave birth to her second daughter, Adel, in an underground hospital parking garage during air-raid sirens amid the war with Iran. She now raises two young daughters alone while fighting the disease and trying to navigate Israeli bureaucracy.

Gabay said she was 16 weeks pregnant when Haim died after years of repeated illness. He had osteosarcoma at 17, later developed leukemia from treatment, then years later lymphoma twice more. After the fourth recovery, he suffered a leg infection, underwent amputation, and died of a heart attack about a year later. Gabay says she felt his death before it was confirmed, recalling that she told her manager, “I feel my husband died,” then rushed home and found him dead in bed. She and her mother tried CPR, a defibrillator was brought, and MDA later confirmed the death.

Weeks later, while showering, she found a hard lump in her breast and told her parents, “I have cancer.” Tests showed triple negative breast cancer, an advanced and aggressive form, with a 4.5-centimeter tumor. She said the oncologists who had treated her husband at Sheba were shocked to see her there. Chemotherapy began at week 25 of pregnancy, after the second treatment she shaved her hair, and she continued while caring for her three-year-old daughter, Oria.

Doctors scheduled an induced birth at week 36 to protect mother and baby. As the Iran war was underway, the maternity ward was moved underground, and Gabay labored in the parking garage with two volunteer doulas. Adel was born after Pitocin induction, then Gabay was taken to a ward and soon moved to a bomb shelter during sirens. The baby entered cardiac follow-up the next day because of possible exposure to chemotherapy in pregnancy.

After delivery, Gabay resumed chemotherapy, which now includes side effects such as neuropathy, causing pain in her hands and feet. She said she is trying to manage sleepless nights, grief, and a system that still demands her late husband’s approval for basic financial transfers. With help from her parents, medical staff, activist Yehuda Glick, Knesset member Yinon Azoulay, and Shuki Barif, she says she wants to raise awareness for breast cancer. “I know I broke Guinness records,” she said. “It will be enough for me to know that because of me, one person was saved.”