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She flatlined three times, lost both legs and had a failing heart. Yet she told doctors she’s ‘the luckiest person on this planet’ | CNN

Published

2 years ago

March 5, 2023

She flatlined three times, lost both legs and had a failing heart. Yet she told doctors she’s ‘the luckiest person on this planet’ | CNN

CNN
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Her smile is vibrant, cheery, typically goofy and at all times contagious. However footage can’t utterly seize her upbeat, constructive vibe. At 21, Claire Bridges has a mature spirit that amazes those that love her in addition to the medical doctors who needed to function on her coronary heart and take away each legs to save lots of her life.

“She had a will to stay, perseverance and a type of twinkle in her eye — I inform all my sufferers that’s half the battle,” stated Dr. Dean Arnaoutakis, a vascular surgeon on the College of South Florida Well being in Tampa who amputated Bridges’ legs after issues from Covid-19.

“Most individuals can be despondent and really feel like life had cheated them,” stated Dr. Ismail El-Hamamsy, a professor of cardiovascular surgical procedure on the Icahn Faculty of Drugs at Mount Sinai in New York Metropolis, who operated on Bridges’ coronary heart.

“However she instructed me, ‘I really feel like I’m the luckiest particular person on this planet. I’ve my complete life forward of me. I can have children, a future, so many issues to stay up for.’

“There was not as soon as that I regarded into her eyes that I didn’t really feel her positiveness was true and real,” he stated. “Claire’s story is one in all simply unbelievable resilience and positivity.”

Bridges left the hospital on her 21st birthday, more than two months after being admitted. Here she is with her brother Will.

In January 2022, Bridges was a 20-year-old mannequin along with her personal house, a gaggle of associates and a part-time job as a bartender in St. Petersburg, Florida. She was a vegan and “exceptionally wholesome,” in accordance with her mom, Kimberly Smith.

When she caught Covid-19 that month, nobody anticipated her be hospitalized. She was totally vaccinated and boosted.

However Bridges had been born with a typical genetic coronary heart defect: aortic valve stenosis, a mutation of the valve within the coronary heart’s foremost artery, the aorta. As a substitute of getting three cusps, or flaps, that permit oxygen-rich blood move from the center into the aorta and to the remainder of the physique, folks with aortic valve stenosis are sometimes born with simply two. The situation makes the center work extraordinarily onerous to do its job, usually inflicting breathlessness, dizziness and fatigue.

“I may work out and stuff, however I may by no means play sports activities,” she instructed CNN. “I couldn’t run. I couldn’t overexert myself.”

Her mother added, “We may actually inform she started to study her limits as she bought older — she would get out of breath, cease and take a break.”

Before her surgeries, Bridges enjoyed roller-skating.

Whether or not as a consequence of her coronary heart or one other unknown cause, Covid-19 hit Bridges onerous. Her well being rapidly spiraled uncontrolled.

“Excessive fatigue, chilly sweats — progressively each single day it could get tougher to attempt to eat or drink something,” she recalled. “Then in the future my mother discovered me unresponsive and rushed me to the hospital. I flatlined 3 times that night time.”

Bridges was placed on dialysis, a ventilator and an exterior pump for her failing coronary heart. She slipped into psychosis.

“I used to be considering that everybody was making an attempt to kill me, however I used to be holding on,” she stated, including that she then noticed a vibrant mild and her late grandfather.

“He was sitting on a bench, fishing, and he was carrying a baseball cap,” she stated. “Then I noticed my mother and father by way of a window. I don’t know if I really did or if it was in my delusion, however I believed, ‘I can’t go away them like this.’ And my physique simply actually wouldn’t surrender.”

Whereas Bridges’ spirit battled on, medical doctors struggled to save lots of her life. Her organs started to close down, additional weakening her frail coronary heart. Blood wasn’t reaching her extremities, and tissues in each legs started to die.

Surgeons tried to save lots of as a lot of her legs as potential. First, they opened tissue in each legs to scale back swelling, then amputated one ankle. Lastly, there was no alternative: Each legs needed to be eliminated.

Docs gathered round her mattress to interrupt the information.

“I keep in mind trying up at them and saying, ‘Properly, thanks for saving my life. And oh, can I’ve bionic legs?’ ” Bridges stated.

“Everybody was completely shocked that she was taking it so effectively,” Smith recalled about her daughter. “However my total household knew that if this tragedy needed to occur to any of us, it could be Claire who would deal with it the perfect. Upbeat and constructive, that’s Claire.”

Bridges had a successful modeling career before she contracted Covid-19.

Dropping her legs was solely a part of Bridges’ battle again to well being. “There have been so many issues that she may have died from whereas she was within the hospital,” Smith stated.

Malnourished, Bridges was placed on a feeding tube. She vomited, rupturing a part of her small gut, and “practically bled out,” Smith stated. To avoid wasting her, medical doctors needed to do an emergency transfusion — a harmful process as a consequence of her weak coronary heart.

“She virtually died whereas getting the emergency transfusion as a result of they needed to pump the blood in so quick,” Smith stated. “Then the following day she bled once more, however they caught it in time.”

Bridges developed refeeding syndrome, a situation by which electrolytes, minerals and different very important fluids in a malnourished physique are thrown out of steadiness when meals is reintroduced, inflicting seizures, muscle and coronary heart weak spot, and a coma in some circumstances. With out fast therapy, it could possibly result in organ failure and dying.

In one other blow, her hair started to fall out, possible as a result of lack of correct vitamin. Her household and associates got here to her rescue.

“I knew that the one strategy to cease me from sobbing each time I pulled chunks of hair out of my head was to simply do away with all of it,” Bridges stated. “I instructed my brother Drew I used to be fascinated about shaving my head, and with out lacking a beat, he instantly checked out me and stated, ‘I’ll shave mine with you.’

“Then it snowballed into everybody telling me they’d shave their heads, too,” Bridges stated with a smile. “It was really a particularly candy, enjoyable and releasing time — plus I’ve at all times needed to shave my head, so I bought to cross it off my bucket record!”

First row (from left): Luba Omelchenko, a friend, and Claire Bridges.
Second row (from left): Andy Beaty, a friend; Jaye Scoggins, Beaty's mother; Anna Bridges-Brown, Claire's sister; and Kimberly Smith, Claire's mother.
Third row: Kristen Graham, a friend who shaved everyone's heads.

Bridges credit her family and friends — together with members of the group who organized fundraisers or reached out on social media — for her upbeat angle all through the ordeal.

“I’m very blessed to have such an incredible household and in addition associates and other people in my group which can be like household,” she stated. “Individuals I didn’t know, those who I haven’t spoken to since elementary faculty or highschool have been reaching out to me.

“Sure, I allowed myself to grieve, and there have been darkish days. However truthfully, my associates and my household surrounded me with a lot love that I by no means had a second to essentially suppose negatively about my legs or how I look now.”

Bridges’ coronary heart introduced one other hurdle: Already frail earlier than her extended sickness, it was now severely broken. She wanted a brand new valve in her aorta, and shortly.

“We at all times knew Claire would want an open-heart surgical procedure in some unspecified time in the future,” her mom stated. “Docs needed her as previous as potential earlier than they changed the valve as a result of the older you’re, the larger you’re, and there’s much less probability of needing one other operation quickly after.”

Bridges with her modeling agent, Kira Alexander. Bridges lost nearly 70 pounds during her hospitalization.

Her medical doctors reached out to Mount Sinai’s El-Hamamsy, an skilled in a extra sophisticated type of aortic valve substitute known as the Ross process.

“Anyone who has an anticipated life expectancy of 20 years or extra is unquestionably a possible candidate for the Ross,” El-Hamamsy stated, “and it’s an ideal resolution for a lot of younger folks like Claire.”

Not like extra conventional surgical procedures that substitute the malfunctioning aortic valve with a mechanical or cadaver model, the Ross process makes use of the affected person’s personal pulmonary valve, which is “a mirror picture of a standard aortic valve with three cusps,” El-Hamamsy stated.

“It’s a dwelling valve, and like every dwelling factor, it’s adaptable,” the surgeon stated. “It turns into like a brand new aortic valve and performs all of the very refined capabilities {that a} regular aortic valve would do.”

The pulmonary valve is then changed with a donor from a cadaver, “the place it issues rather less as a result of the pressures and the stresses on the pulmonary facet are a lot decrease,” he stated.

Bridges with Dr. Ismail El-Hamamsy, the surgeon who replaced the failed valve in her heart.

The usage of a substitute half from the affected person’s personal physique for the aortic valve additionally eliminates the necessity for lifelong use of blood thinners and the continuing danger of main hemorrhaging or clotting and stroke, El-Hamamsy stated. And since the brand new valve is stronger than the malfunctioning valve it replaces, sufferers aren’t as prone to want future surgical procedures.

“Ross is the one substitute operation for the aortic valve that enables sufferers to have a standard life expectancy,” he stated, “and a very regular high quality of life with no restrictions, no modifications to their life-style and an excellent sturdiness of the operation.”

The Ross process is extra technically difficult than inserting a tissue valve or a mechanical valve, “a few of the easiest operations that we as cardiac surgeons would ever do,” El-Hamamsy stated.

As a result of the operation takes a excessive stage of technical ability, it’s solely out there in just a few surgical services presently.

“It requires devoted surgeons who wish to commit their observe to the Ross process and who’ve the technical expertise and experience to try this,” he added. “Sufferers must know they need to be present process the surgical procedure in a Ross-certified facility.”

When El-Hamamsy first met Bridges in a video name final spring, he wasn’t positive he would be capable of do the surgical procedure. Solely 127 kilos earlier than she bought sick, Bridges had misplaced practically 70 kilos throughout her hospitalization.

“She was so emaciated. There was no approach I may take her into the working room the best way she was,” El-Hamamsy stated. “I by no means anticipated that she would get well so rapidly and preserve her amazingly constructive mentality.”

Slowly, over many months, Bridges fought her approach again to well being. In rehab, she started to study to stroll with prosthetic decrease limbs. As she bought stronger, she has continued one in all her favourite actions — mountain climbing.

Bridges climbs a rock wall using prosthetic limbs.

“At six months, I may hardly acknowledge her — she had gained weight again, her pores and skin had totally healed over on the amputation websites, and he or she was a very different-appearing particular person to the malnourished and debilitated woman I had met within the hospital,” stated Arnaoutakis, the vascular surgeon.

The center operation was efficiently accomplished in December. At this time, Bridges is in the course of cardiac rehabilitation and searching ahead to being fitted for prosthetic blades — J-shaped, carbon-fiber decrease limbs that may enable her to run on a observe for the primary time in her life.

She’s additionally returned to modeling, proud to indicate the world how effectively she has survived.

Bridges has returned to modeling after her surgeries.

El-Hamamsy isn’t stunned. “I instructed her from the day I met her on that Zoom, ‘It is going to be such a privilege to take care of you since you’ve impressed me. I’ve by no means met a teenager with this stage of maturity and outlook on life.’

“I nonetheless consider Claire each infrequently once I stumble upon issue with life or no matter. It’s a reminder that happiness and positivity is a alternative. Claire made that alternative.”

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News

The L.A. Fires Expose a Web of Governments, Weak by Design

Published

3 hours ago

January 19, 2025

Press Room

The L.A. Fires Expose a Web of Governments, Weak by Design

When two hijacked jetliners struck the World Trade Center towers in New York City on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani became the face of a city struggling with tragedy, a ubiquitous presence projecting authority, assurance and control. The reputation he forged that day would be tarnished with time, but it became a model for mayors facing crises across the country.

As Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles confronts a city dealing with devastating fires, her performance has raised questions, even among her supporters, about whether she can become the dominant executive leading a city through a crisis that New Yorkers saw more than 23 years ago.

Some of those concerns reflect her relative lack of executive experience — she is a former member of Congress and the California assembly, where she served in the powerful role of speaker. And some of those concerns have to do with the fallout from her absence from the city when the fires broke out.

But the question of who is in charge — of who is playing the role in Los Angeles that Mr. Giuliani did in New York, to use one example — is also testimony to the diffusion and, at times, dysfunction that make up the core DNA of the governance of the greater Los Angeles area. That muddled authority is a sharp, and by design deliberate, contrast with New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and other cities that are dominated by powerful, high-profile mayors.

The city of Los Angeles, with a population of 3.8 million, is one of 88 different cities that make up the county of Los Angeles. That county, with a population of 9.6 million spread across 4,751 square miles stretching inland from the Pacific Ocean, is controlled by a five-person board of supervisors, each one representing 1.9 million people. Each of those supervisors rivals the mayor of Los Angeles in clout as they oversee their own fiefdoms in the nation’s most populous county, even if they are relatively unknown by constituents.

Within those vast borders, there is a Los Angeles Police Department and a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, as well as an additional 45 police departments protecting, to name a few, Santa Monica, Long Beach, Inglewood and Pasadena. There are dozens of municipal fire departments, including one that serves the city and another that serves the county.

One of the two major fires that devastated this region — the Eaton fire — is not even in the city of Los Angeles; it is in an unincorporated section of Los Angeles County. The response to the Eaton fire was led by the county fire department; the city fire department was at the forefront in fighting the Palisades fire.

All of this is a recipe, analysts said, for rivalry among elected officials and confusion among voters, and a challenge for even the most accomplished elected official trying to grab the mantle of leadership amid what Gray Davis, a former California governor, called “the dispersed and discombobulated nature of our government.”

“As an executive most of my life — controller, lieutenant governor, governor — there’s a time when you need clear accountability, someone who will give orders and accept responsibility whether things work or not,” said Mr. Davis, who served as governor from 1999 to 2003. “The public here seems not to want that on a day-to-day basis. But when there is an emergency, we need that. And we don’t have that system.”

When New Orleans was overrun by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, resulting in devastating damage and hundreds of deaths, the mayor, C. Ray Nagin, stepped forward to lead his city through the crisis, and to raise his national profile. (Mr. Nagin’s reputation, like Mr. Giuliani’s, also faded with time.) At a recent press briefing about the fires in Los Angeles, eight city and county officials lined up to speak. Ms. Bass was just one part of the lineup, talking about the Palisades fire, but so was Kathryn Barger, the increasingly high-profile member of the county board of supervisors whose district includes the Eaton fire.

“What you have in a city like New York is a fundamentally mayor-oriented system where, even in quiet times, everything flows to the mayor,” said Raphael J. Sonenshein, a longtime expert on Los Angeles politics and government and the executive director of the Haynes Foundation, a Los Angeles civic research organization. “Here it’s a little more of an art to exercise mayoral leadership. The mayor might have strong opinions, but to get problems solved, you have to figure out how to get these governance agencies to work together. It’s very hard to get things done.”

None of this is accidental.

The web of overlapping governments is the product of a reformist system of governance that has evolved over the years, designed to constrain the authority of cities, counties and the people who lead them. Many of the people who settled here over the past century came from the Midwest, and they carry a strong distrust of the powerful mayors and political machines found in cities like Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.

The mayor of Los Angeles does not control the school system, as is the case in some other large cities. Public health falls mostly under the jurisdiction of Los Angeles County, forcing the mayor and supervisors to work together on challenges such as homelessness. In the city, there is a police commission that makes the final decisions on hiring and firing police chiefs; Ms. Bass needs the commission to ratify her choice of who should head the department.

The stakes here are high. The fires are diminishing, but rebuilding could end up being as challenging as battling the fires, testing the resources and agility of this teeming catalog of elected officials.

Eric M. Garcetti, a former mayor, said all these government agencies — notwithstanding any history of rivalry — had appeared to work in tandem as the fires raged. “But for the rebuild, it’ll be absolutely critical for us to act like we’re one city and not a collection of 88 villages,” he said in an interview from India, where he is now the U.S. ambassador.

These structural tensions have long been a source of frustration for Los Angeles mayors. In interviews, two of them — Mr. Garcetti and Antonio Villaraigosa — said they would support creating a dominant government representing the region, to replace the network of overlapping municipal governments. Mr. Villaraigosa said he supported, for example, remaking Los Angeles along the lines of San Francisco, which is both a county and a city. They both argued the issue had become more urgent with the kind of natural disasters that have come with climate change.

“I don’t think that’s going happen in my lifetime, but it would certainly make things more coherent,” Mr. Garcetti said. For now, he said, mayors have to fall back on the power of persuasion. “Informal power is so critical,” he said. “It is so critical to put together coalitions.”

Mr. Villaraigosa said that, in raising concerns about the structural challenges Los Angeles faces, he was not criticizing Ms. Bass. “I don’t want to join that,” he said. “But when you have all agencies involved — 25 people speaking — it diffuses the leadership model. You have two different bureaucracies trying to work together. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.”

By contrast, unconstrained by jurisdictions, Gov. Gavin Newsom has been an ever-present figure over these past nearly two weeks, walking through smoky ruins as he has talked with firefighters and people who have lost their homes. He expanded a special legislative session to address the Los Angeles wildfires and signed executive orders dealing with response and recovery efforts.

Ms. Bass has been criticized for being out of the country when the fires erupted — she was in Ghana in West Africa to attend the inauguration of its new president. Upon her return, in a widely circulated clip, Ms. Bass stood silently as a reporter pressed her on why she left amid warnings of dangerous fire weather.

Since her return, she has issued her own executive orders to expedite rebuilding, and she has named a longtime civic leader, Steve Soboroff, to head recovery efforts. But she has also repeatedly defended her performance, saying that she and leaders across the region are working “in lock step” to address the crisis.

“We are actively fighting this fire,” she said at a news conference on the second day of the crisis, adding: “So what we are seeing is the result of eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in L.A. in at least 14 years. And we have to resist any — any — effort to pull us apart.”

The mayor’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Saturday.

Even before the fire, there was movement to repair the system. In November, county voters endorsed the biggest change in its government in a century — including the establishment of a new person to lead the county of Los Angeles, an elected county executive who will be chosen in the 2028 election.

“They will be the most powerful elected official in the United States,” said Fernando Guerra, the head of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. “They will represent 10 million people. They will have a lot of power. Most important, they are going to steal the thunder and the pulpit from the mayor of Los Angeles. It’s going to be as centralized as New York is now.”

It’s difficult to say what role a county executive might have played in directing the government’s response to the fires, a duty typically overseen by the fire departments themselves. But officials said that what the region needed, in addition to the fire and police officials who directed the response, was a political leader displaying moral authority and leadership, with the platform to speak across the expanse of a county whose population is larger than that of most states.

“People want to see their elected official — they want to see who is in charge,” said Zev Yaroslavky, who spent 20 years as a member of the Los Angeles City Council and 20 years as a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “In this particular case, the fact is you had two different big fires: one in the city of Los Angeles and one in the unincorporated area of the county. Who is in charge?”

Shawn Hubler contributed reporting.

News

Israel’s hostage relief laced with dread: ‘it’s only a glimpse of hope’

Published

4 hours ago

January 19, 2025

Press Room

Israel’s hostage relief laced with dread: ‘it’s only a glimpse of hope’

It was the moment Israelis had been yearning for. On Sunday afternoon, 471 long days after they were seized by Hamas in the blackest hour of Israel’s history, three young hostages made the painstaking journey from imprisonment in Gaza to freedom in their homeland.

The release of the three women — Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher — marked the beginning of a multiphase deal that offers a chance to end the brutal war in Gaza, and the hope of freedom for dozens more hostages after more than 15 months of torment for them, their families and the nation.

But Israelis’ joy and relief at the release is laced with anguish at what the coming weeks will reveal. Israeli officials believe at least half of the remaining 94 hostages are dead. And many doubt the fragile truce will last long enough for all to be returned.

One of the Israeli hostages exiting a vehicle to be handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) during the hostage-prisoner exchange operation in Saraya Square in western Gaza City on Sunday © AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images

“There is this dichotomy between this state of mind where this might be the last day [of life] for their husband or child — and the possibility that that same person might be sleeping in the room next door by next week,” says Udi Goren, whose family is waiting for the return of the body of his cousin Tal Haimi, who was killed on October 7 and then taken to Gaza.

“I don’t think words can describe the immense disparity between these two emotions.”

For the past 15 months, the fate of the hostages has been seared into Israel’s national consciousness. Their faces from happier times have been plastered and replastered on buildings and billboards from Haifa to Eilat. Details of their lives fill daily news bulletins. Rallies demanding the government act to secure their release have become a weekly fixture.

But as the clock ticked towards the truce this weekend, alongside the hopes that at least some would finally be freed, there were reminders of how volatile the situation remained. Missiles from Yemen set off the eerie howl of air raid sirens across the country. In Tel Aviv, a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli before being shot dead by a passer-by.

Meanwhile, Israeli warplanes continued to pulverise Gaza into Sunday morning, bringing the death toll in the shattered enclave since the deal was announced last week to more than 140, according to Palestinian officials.

Jubilation in Tel Aviv as news coverage shows the release of the three hostages © Shir Torem/Reuters

“There is a glimpse of hope, but it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel,” said Daria Giladi, as she and a friend joined a rally in support of the hostages in downtown Jerusalem on Saturday evening.

“You’re happy people are coming home, you’re happy the war is going to be over, even for a short while. But there’s still such a long way to go. It’s only a third of the hostages who are supposed to come back [in the first six-week phase of the deal]. So it’s not enough.”

Even for relatives of the 33 hostages due to be released in the first phase of the deal — when children, women, the sick and the elderly will be freed — the uncertainty is acute.

Former hostage Emily Damari is reunited with family on Sunday © IDF

Sharone Lifschitz’s parents, Yocheved and Oded, life-long advocates of coexistence with the Palestinians, were both seized on October 7. Yocheved was freed 17 days later. But the family has no idea of Oded’s fate. When Yocheved returned, she told her family he was dead. But hostages released a few weeks later in a truce in November 2023 said they had seen him alive.

And so for the past 15 months, the family has waited, hoping against hope for Oded’s safe return, while grappling with the enormity of what it would mean for a frail octogenarian shot in the wrist during Hamas’s assault to have survived so long in Hamas captivity.

“We all fight for him with the belief that, until we know otherwise, we want him back. If his fate and his strength held, and he found a way to survive against all odds, we’re so looking forward to seeing him,” says Lifschitz, her voice catching.

“[But] he saw the destruction of everything he fought for. And then he had to be in the hands of the people who caused [that destruction]. And he had to somehow survive when his health is not strong and he is injured. It’s very hard to wish that on anybody — let alone on a father you love so much.”

Yarden Gonen, sister of released Israeli hostage Romi Gonen (pictured), speaks during a demonstration by families of the captives calling for their release, at a kibbutz near the border with Gaza last August © Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

For families whose relatives are not due to be freed until the second and third phases of the deal — when the remaining living male hostages, and then the bodies of those who have died, will be returned — the uncertainty is greater.

When the previous seven-day truce and hostage-for-prisoner exchange took place in November 2023, freeing 110 of the 250 hostages originally seized, many in Israel hoped that it would spawn further such deals, and that the remaining hostages could be brought back soon as well.

But what followed was 14 months of false dawns, as Israel and Hamas repeatedly failed to strike a deal, and the number of living hostages steadily dwindled. Claims by far-right ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to have repeatedly thwarted an agreement have outraged hostages’ relatives. And it has left those with relatives not due to be released until stages two or three fearing their time may never come.

Among them is Herut Nimrodi, whose then-18-year-old son Tamir was seized in his pyjamas, barefoot and without his glasses, from his military base near the Erez crossing in the early hours of Hamas’s attack.

Nimrodi knows the exact time — 06.49am — of their last message, when Tamir contacted her and said rockets were landing in the base. The family found out he had been seized when one of her daughters saw a video on Instagram. But in the months since they have had no indication of his condition. In November, they marked his 20th birthday without knowing “if he even reached 19”.

“I know that my son’s name is not on the list [for release in the first phase], because he is a soldier, and we’re terrified,” Nimrodi says. “What I fear is not only that we will not get to the next stage. But also that [once the first group have been released] the lobby [for further releases] will become much smaller, because there will be fewer hostages, and they are only men.”

Recognition is also widespread that, even for those who do come back, the return will just be a first step. Lifschitz says her mother is coping “better than most of us” with the return from her imprisonment.

Relatives and friends of people killed and abducted by Hamas gather in Tel Aviv on Sunday © Oded Balilty/AP

But for those who have spent more than 15 months in captivity, the process is likely to be far harder. Hostages previously released have spoken of being kept in cages, or complete darkness, of being drugged and beaten, and in some cases of suffering or witnessing sexual abuse.

Hagai Levine, a physician working with a forum supporting the families of hostages, said in a press briefing last week that he expected “every aspect of [hostages’] physical and mental health will be affected”. “Time is of the essence — recovery will be a long and excruciating process,” he said.

But for all the angst over the challenges ahead, families are desperate for the process to begin. “Everyone in Israel — and of course the families — needs closure. We are a wounded society right now. We’re in trauma. We didn’t even start the post-trauma yet,” says Nimrodi. “We need to heal. And to see hostages coming back is a healing process for us as a community.”

Lifschitz agrees. “We know that so many hostages are not alive and we will have quite a few funerals and shivas [mourning periods] to sit through,” she says. “But at least, there will be a kind of closure. We will know. At least we will know.”

News

Joe Biden's complicated legacy : Consider This from NPR

Published

4 hours ago

January 19, 2025

Press Room

Joe Biden's complicated legacy : Consider This from NPR

President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House on January 15, 2025.

Mandel Ngan/Pool/Getty Images

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Mandel Ngan/Pool/Getty Images

President Joe Biden delivers his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House on January 15, 2025.

Mandel Ngan/Pool/Getty Images

When he ran for office in 2020, President Joe Biden vowed to turn the page on then president Donald Trump. But it’s Trump who is returning to the White House for a second term in office.

We speak with NPR’s Asma Khalid, who covered the Biden administration, on the legacy he leaves behind.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Jordan Marie Smith and Brianna Scott. It was edited by Roberta Rampton, Adam Raney and Jeanette Woods. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.