October 7 Survivor Recovers from Severe Injuries, Resumes Her Medical Career

Speaking with gratitude to Sheba Medical staff, Ellay Golan said, ‘They fought for my life.’

By Shula Rosen

Ellay Golan, a medical student from Kfar Azza, tells the harrowing story of her family’s survival on October 7th, and, returning to her medical studies, is a source of inspiration and healing for others.

The Golan family survived despite almost impossible odds, literally emerging from the flames of October 7th to rebuild their lives as a family.

Ellay told Israel 21c about the moment she realized that Hamas terrorists were surrounding her home.

Ellay and her husband Ariel took their 18-month-old daughter Yael to the shelter.

“We locked the shelter door and waited there with a kitchen knife,” she recalls.

Despite the shock, the parents had to distract their daughter to calm her and give her a sense of normalcy despite the horrific situation.

In one update from the Kibbutz Whatsapp group, a woman said her husband had been shot in the leg and was bleeding in front of the house.

Although Ellay wanted to apply her medical expertise to save him, she knew both of them would be killed by terrorists.

“That’s a feeling of guilt that I still carry. Because he’s dead,” Ellay says. “I know I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t get there at all. But I could have tried — though if I had, my daughter wouldn’t have a mother.”

What followed was an extensive battle with the terrorists who set fire to their house to try to force them out so they could then kill them.

With no good choices, the family made a run for it through the flames, although the dog stayed behind, fearing the fire, and died of smoke inhalation.

Ellay Golan said the pain was unimaginable; they managed to hide in the dirt and bushes outside when the terrorists gave up, most likely assuming they had died in the fire.

As her daughter lost consciousness from smoke inhalation, Ellay made the high-risk yet life-saving decision to return to the entrance of the kibbutz, where the family was rescued by the IDF and taken on a helicopter for medical treatment at Sheba Medical Center.

The entire family had extensive injuries, with second and third-degree burns covering 65% of Ellay’s body, 45% of her husband’s, and 30% of her baby’s.

Yael was put into a medical coma for 8 days and Ellay for 58 days.

As Ariel and Yael moved to outpatient care, Ellay was on life support for 10 days after one of her lungs collapsed.

Speaking with gratitude to Sheba staff, Ellay said, “They fought for my life.”

“I’d lost 12 kilos [26.4 pounds] of muscle and fat. I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t move my hands. I had a tracheotomy, so I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t drink. I was a body lying on a bed.”

After months in Sheba’s rehabilitation center, she gradually recovered.

“Slowly, slowly, slowly they taught me how to walk again and taught me how to move my hands,” she says. “Now I’m able to bathe my daughter. Three months ago I couldn’t even imagine it.”

Ellay is now continuing her residency and Soroka; although previously she was preparing to be an OB/GYN, she is now focusing on ICU treatment and anesthesia.

When asked what kept her and her husband alive and fighting, Ellay responded, “We knew that we needed to fight for our daughter’s life. We thought that we were going to die anyway. But the motivation was to keep her alive, no matter what,” she says.

“And now we always say that she saved our lives.”