"The Doctor Declared Me Dead, But Then My Friend Delivered a Punch to My Chest"

The moment the bus Shai Reller and his friends were on veered off the road and rolled into the abyss, plummeting from a height of 25 meters, marked a division in Reller's life.

This happened about twenty years ago when Reller was a young man fresh out of the army, embarking on a trip to the East that included two months in India and a month in Nepal. "In Nepal, we wanted to take a regular passenger bus to the capital, Kathmandu, but after an hour and a half of travel, the driver lost control, and the bus veered into the gorge."

The outcome, he says, was tragically severe. "Out of the bus passengers, fifteen were killed, and many others were injured to varying degrees. Along with me were friends who had traveled with me from home, along with another Israeli boy and girl we met during the journey. Thankfully, all three of them were only slightly injured, while I was severely hurt."

Fortunately, because his friends were not seriously injured, they managed to pull him from the valley to the road. "Since this happened twenty years ago, there were no mobile phones available to contact rescue units, and finally, we found a vehicle that took us to the hospital. During the journey, I was fully conscious but lost a lot of blood, and my friend was passing blood from mouth to mouth. Thus, he actually saved my life until we reached the hospital."

Grim Statistics

Despite Reller's critical state, he remained alert and experienced every moment of this nightmarish ordeal. "I remember entering a very old hospital," he recounts, "and suddenly I only saw darkness and lost consciousness. My friends later told me they admitted me to intensive care, and at the doctor's request, they left me on the bed and waited outside. After two minutes, the doctor came out to them and said he had no choice but to declare me dead. My friends reported that they entered the room and saw me lying on the bed, with closed eyes and a blue face, then, like a scene from a Hollywood movie, one of the friends stood beside me, raised his fist in the air, and forcefully pushed my chest. At that moment, I took a deep breath and opened my eyes. It turned out that in doing so, he literally saved my life, as all the doctors in the department looked at him in shock, and from then on, they also joined the attempts to keep me alive."

"I was classified as critically injured," he adds, "and at that time, the Foreign Ministry was already updated about what had happened, and they contacted my parents to inform them about my injury. My parents obviously set out for Nepal, accompanied by two doctors from Israel, with the goal of understanding my condition, and mainly to stabilize it so I could be flown back for further treatment in Israel.

"At that time, I was conscious, and I remember my parents arriving at the hospital, but due to the anesthesia and painkillers, I was very groggy, and since I was connected to a ventilator – I couldn't speak or communicate. The only way for me to convey messages was by blinking my eyes, and it was a very challenging experience. Only after three days were they able to stabilize my condition a bit, and they flew me back to Israel, from the airport leading me directly in an ambulance to the intensive care unit at Tel Hashomer. There, in the department, my parents received the first severe diagnosis – I was expected to remain paralyzed all over my body and connected to a ventilator for the rest of my life, unable to speak or communicate with the environment."

What did the doctors base their declaration on?

"On statistics. They made it clear to my parents that statistically, people in a condition like mine do not experience improvement or progress, and they remain that way for life."

Did you hear this conversation?

"No, the things were said to them not in my hearing, and I owe a lot of gratitude to my parents for not sharing this with me, because not knowing about the dire predictions personally saved me, as at that stage, I was still optimistic and wholeheartedly believed I would get through this."

At that time, Reller still couldn't talk due to the ventilator, but after about a month of hospitalization in intensive care, he was transferred to a respiratory rehabilitation department at Tel Hashomer with the aim of weaning him off the ventilator. "The process was long," he recounts, "but after two and a half months, I was finally able to breathe on my own again. It was a huge relief and finally allowed me to speak verbally rather than communicate only with eye blinks."

But even here, his journey in the hospital departments was not over. "At the next stage, they transferred me to a neurological rehabilitation department at Tel Hashomer," he explains, "with the goal this time of preparing me for the new life ahead and teaching me how to live as a disabled person, with all the associated implications. During those days, I also underwent spinal fusion surgery for the broken vertebrae that led to the severe injury."

Dreams Coming True

Reller describes his rehabilitation period at Tel Hashomer as a "roller coaster," moving between ups and downs, between despair and hope, between success and failure, and between reality and an uncertain future. "It was a time filled with many new experiences I never believed I would have to go through in life," he shares. "One after another, I started realizing that I was not even able to perform the simplest actions, like showering, eating, using the restroom, and so on. Gradually, the understanding sank in that something very significant had happened and changed in my life."

In total, Reller was hospitalized for a year, and despite the severe injury, he managed to surprise the doctors by retaining his ability to speak, as well as staying alive, since they stated that very few survive in such conditions. "But the truth is that it didn’t encourage me very much," he notes, "because moment by moment, I understood more how limited I was, and it stirred up many fears, questions, and uncertainties about the future. And yes, there was also the toughest struggle of all, with the feeling that I was becoming a burden on my family. It was so unpleasant to realize that my trip abroad had stopped everyone’s lives. My mom left her job and was with me throughout the day at the hospital, while my dad worked shifts to be with me at night, and my sisters hardly saw my parents during those days, and I felt it was unfair to me – to mess up all their plans like that."

"However, I must mention that it was my family who gave me the best reasons to get up in the morning. They were always there for me in every way, helping me get through that time which was so difficult. Friends also came to visit and managed to support and uplift me."

A year after the severe injury, the unimaginable happened when Reller was discharged from the hospital and finally returned home. For some, this sounded like a dream come true, but Reller notes that it was actually one of the hardest chapters. "Because staying in the hospital was undoubtedly tough, but it was also very encompassing, as I was constantly surrounded by staff of all kinds, and friends visiting and staying over. I didn’t have time to feel lonely or fear what awaited me, and suddenly I got home and began to understand that this was my condition, and it was permanent and wouldn’t change. At home, I was also exposed to boredom and solitude, with a lot of fears surfacing."

"As the days at home went by, I realized that now it depended solely on me – I could decide to lie in bed and wail about my fate, but I could also decide to rehabilitate myself and move on. Very quickly, I concluded that I had no intention of staying stuck behind, but rather to keep moving forward with what I had, and I decided to commit to that with all my might."

It wasn't an easy decision, but he nonetheless set forth on that journey. "I initially decided to fulfill my dream of obtaining a degree and thus registered for economics studies, beginning my first semester. As you can guess, the studies required a lot of writing, which I was unable to perform, and so I learned how to study anew, being assigned a mentor who wrote out all the exercises and calculations that I dictated to her. The studies were incredibly challenging, but even though I initially estimated that it would take me six years to complete the degree, I managed to do it in just four years, and then I continued on to a master's degree that lasted another two years and also ended with honors for an MBA."

Photo: Aran Chen

Making Lemonade

With two degrees in hand, Reller turned to fulfill his next dreams, finding an interesting job as an analyst, and engaging a lot in calculations and the economic field. "With this success, I also had the strength to dream further, and this time the dream was the most complex of all – I wanted to get married and build a home. For a long time, I dated various women, some disabled and some not; with many of them, I quickly understood that my physical condition wasn’t suitable for them.

"Until I first met Idit through a dating site. At first, I didn’t tell her about my condition, but when our conversations became more serious, and a meeting was on the table – I told her everything. Her reaction was: 'That sounds intriguing, let’s meet.' So we met for the first time, and then on subsequent occasions, and eventually got married. Soon we are going to celebrate eight years of marriage, and when I recall our wedding, I still feel a shiver down my spine today."

"We had a special chuppah with a ramp; I sat there next to Idit as I looked out at the huge crowd that had come to celebrate with us, so many friends and family from various phases of my life, and I felt a real sense of victory, because despite what had happened, I managed to build a home, bring joy to my parents, and fulfill my greatest dream."

About a year ago, he also fulfilled another sweet dream with the birth of his son, Lavi. "The journey to becoming parents wasn’t easy for us at all," he clarifies. "We went through five and a half years of complex fertility treatments, including miscarriages and a stillbirth. But here we are, in the end, we received the greatest gift, and right now we are celebrating the birthday of our one-year-old Lavi."

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The challenging journey that Reller has experienced in his life has ignited in him the desire to share his story with others, and thus for the past ten years, he finds himself traveling all over the country giving lectures in which he shares his life story and the numerous insights he has gathered, under the title: "From the Abyss and Back." Among other things, he also shared this in a TED talk and serves as a mentor for overcoming challenges, personally guiding people in various situations and providing them with necessary tools.

"My aspiration is to empower everyone who listens to me, from where they are," he emphasizes, "because while most of the people I reach do not face disability, I don't think there is anyone who hasn't experienced a limiting and troubling experience, and my wish is to convey the message my father told me from the first moment: 'Learn to make lemonade.' Because one thing is clear to me: what happened to me did not happen by chance, and even from the most difficult situation, one can learn to extract the good."