Mother of 5.5-Year-Old with Leukemia: 'It's Easy to Despair, But There's a Creator and Everything is for the Best'

When Esti Sokolovsky's 5.5-year-old daughter complained of knee pain, Esti thought it was temporary and it would pass. Little Hadar often complained of being too tired to walk and wanted to be carried even short distances. According to Esti, as a Jewish mother, she felt obligated to check her daughter's condition, despite moments when she dismissed it as mere fussiness.

But fear gnawed at her, and Esti decided to take her daughter to a pediatrician. 'A few days later, I noticed red spots on her skin, and all my alarm bells went off,' Esti recalled in an interview. Months earlier, her grandfather had passed away shortly after being diagnosed with leukemia, but she hadn't considered that possibility yet.

They decided to perform routine blood tests at the clinic, but before that, the doctor kindly checked Hadar again. 'When we arrived, Hadar was already unable to walk and had a high fever. The doctor immediately said, "First of all, I can see she has a severe pneumonia." When the blood test results came back, we were sent straight to intensive care at Schneider Hospital, as Hadar's immune system was at zero.'

Faith is all a person has, and we must always remember there's someone running the world

Esti spent an entire day with little Hadar in the hospital, as various tests were performed on her small body. 'The next day, they decided to do a bone marrow test under full anesthesia, where they take fluid from the bone to check for cancerous cells.'

Those moments in August of last year, Esti will never forget. 'Everything happened so fast that I didn't even think about the disease as leukemia. I was still convinced it was nothing more than pneumonia that would soon pass, and we would return home to our routine,' she recalled. They did return home, straight to the pediatrician, who said there was nothing wrong with Hadar and she simply wanted some attention.

Shortly thereafter, Hadar was hospitalized, and her mother learned the real reason she was there. 'We were called into a room, and the doctor told us our daughter has a blood disease called leukemia, which is treatable. As soon as I heard 'leukemia,' I felt all the blood in my body vanish. I sat down and asked, 'Does this mean she will die?' That was my memory from my grandfather, who passed away two months after his leukemia was discovered.

'I vaguely heard the doctor talking about the treatment options they offered, but I didn't really understand what she was saying. The shock lasted about ten minutes, and it took me time to gather myself. Eventually, I told my husband I wanted to talk with him privately. We sat alone in the room - Itzik, me, and Hashem. I said to him, 'Hashem gave us a test, and we will stand up to it with strength. Right now, I think it's bad because I'm a small person, but surely it's for the best.' We just sat there crying and shouting, and we said a "psalm of thanks".'

It's the easiest to despair and ask, 'Why did this happen to me?'

When asked where she found the strength to face the trial with faith instead of despair, Esti responds, 'It's the easiest to despair and ask why this happened to me or what I did wrong. But we chose life. We chose that if we trust in Hashem, it's wholehearted and more. With those words, I told Hashem, 'My daughter and I are already in your hands. You're choosing what happens to us - so here we are, we're yours.' And from that moment, I don't know how to explain it, we felt like someone injected us with turbo energy, filling us with extraordinary strength.'

Esti describes herself as a very faithful person, and without her faith, she's not sure she would have survived this challenging trial.

'The truth is that faith is what sustains me in every situation and keeps me and my family filled with joy, in good times and bad. Even on the less good days of the disease, I say thank you to Hashem and make sure to say "psalm of thanks" - because faith is all a person has, and we must remember that there is someone running the world. We just need to learn to let go and let Him do the work for us. The moment we let go and trust Him - He has no other choice but to be there for us.'