Three-Year-Old Saved by Donor Heart After Nine-Month Wait in Hospital

For nine months, 3.5-year-old Raphael Adrei was effectively confined to Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva, living with a Berlin Heart, a portable artificial heart that kept him alive after a severe congenital heart defect. Born in Jerusalem, he had already undergone his first heart operation at 3.5 months old, then a second emergency surgery at age two, but his condition kept worsening until doctors said he might need a transplant. Raphael understood the situation plainly, telling those around him, “Waiting for a heart,” and asking, “When will the heart arrive?”

His family had nearly left for New York, where children’s transplant waits are shorter, and his father had already arrived there. But two hours before the planned flight, doctors called his mother, Hodeya, back to the hospital and told her a matching heart had been found in Israel. The donor was 6.5-year-old Shabaa Bedir from Kafr Qassem, who collapsed during a family trip to Eilat, was found to have a massive brain hemorrhage, and died two days later.

Shabaa’s father, Maharan Bedir, said the family agreed immediately to donate her organs. “We are messengers,” he said. “What will I do with a heart in burial? My daughter is gone. Let her organs save lives.” Before saying goodbye, he told her, “Do not forget us upstairs, and there is a reunion.”

The transplant required precise timing because a heart can remain outside the body for only about six hours. At around 3 a.m., Dr. Amir Rotstein told Hodeya the new heart was working inside Raphael’s chest. The surgeon, Dr. Gabi Amir, called the match “like winning the lottery,” noting that the child’s heart was about the size of a six-year-old’s fist. Raphael recovered quickly, began singing and running through the ward, and called himself a “superhero.” He later visited the Biblical Zoo, where he fed a giraffe a carrot.

The story also carried a personal tragedy for Dr. Rotstein, who had been treating Raphael for years while grieving his own son, killed in combat in Khan Younis on June 6, 2025. He said the transplant news helped him get out of bed on hard mornings. Raphael left the ward with a medal, asked, “We won, right?”, and met the Bedir family, who told him, “Your daughter’s heart is with you,” while Hodeya replied, “Amen.”