Officer's Heartbreak: A Near-Death Experience Amid War's Grief

Since the onset of the war, reserve officer Sivan Sukkali Ben Zachary has been tasked with organizing numerous military funerals, until her heart could bear no more. She suffered cardiac arrest and clinical death, but by the grace of Hashem, she returned to life and is now in rehabilitation.

In an interview with Niv Raskin on Channel 12's morning news, Sivan shared that she had no previous heart issues: "During this war, I was involved in organizing funerals. I moved from one to the next, acting like the 'funeral producer.' I ensured everything ran smoothly, providing families with the support they needed for the best possible funeral. Daily, I attended many funerals after orchestrating them, hearing countless eulogies. It was incredibly tough. I never imagined it would affect me so profoundly. In the day-to-day, you deliver news or organize a funeral. You fulfill your role, and it ends there. But in this case, it didn't end. From funeral to funeral, I heard heartbreakingly difficult eulogies that my heart simply couldn't contain—the pain of the families, our collective pain as a people. It was truly hard."

Sivan recounted how she struggled to detach from her duties even after returning home. She mentioned that during one of the final funerals she organized, she couldn't feel her legs: "It was incredibly difficult. I was at a funeral in Kiryat Shaul cemetery where 17 graves were being dug. I knew many more funerals were coming. I felt I could no longer stand. Something felt really wrong in me. I began to feel slight chest pains, but didn't give it much thought. I didn't expect I would suffer a heart event."

The next day, Sivan felt something different. "At 4:30 in the morning, I felt as if someone was trying to pull my heart out of its place. The pain was like nothing I'd ever felt. I woke my husband and said, 'Please call an ambulance.' He offered to drive me himself. I told him, 'No,' sensing something significant was happening. When the ambulance arrived, they told me, 'The ECG is normal; you're probably having an anxiety attack.' I insisted they transport me to the hospital. I know my body, and this was not normal."

Upon reaching the hospital, her ECG readings were normal. Doctors decided to send her for a chest X-ray, but on the way, she went into cardiac arrest. "My husband saw me, effectively dead. He screamed for a doctor throughout the hospital. It was early morning with little activity. They immediately started a lengthy resuscitation, about 52 minutes with defibrillation. They connected me to an ECMO to understand what was happening since previous tests were normal. They conducted a catheterization and found a torn heart artery, attributing it to stress, as I'm a young woman with no cholesterol issues or anything else that could cause a heart event. They realized it was stress-induced."

For 52 minutes, doctors fought for her life while Sivan was in a state of clinical death. She lost consciousness with no pulse. "'The heart stopped,' that's what the doctors said. If I had been at a different hospital, they might not have succeeded, as not every hospital has an ECMO. They may not have thought of it. They managed—it was a miracle. I was fortunate the incident happened there and that I was placed on ECMO. Afterwards, I was sedated and ventilated for days until my husband requested they wake me—on my 40th birthday. I woke exactly on my 40th birthday, opened my eyes."

These days, Sivan is undergoing rehabilitation. Due to the ECMO connection, a nerve in her leg was affected, so she walks with a cane. "I'm still in neurological rehab, in addition to heart rehab. It'll take some time before I fully recover, mentally too, but slowly. The main thing is I'm alive. This is my miracle, completely."