‘Reborn’ crash victim goes home, recovered

Ambut Mulau fought 5 weeks after losing her brother.

By JUDY SIEGEL
ambut311 (photo credit: Kaplan Medical Center)
ambut311
(photo credit: Kaplan Medical Center)
After arriving at Kaplan Medical Center in critical condition and undergoing 15 operations in the last four months, 22-year-old Ambet Mulau is the lucky one.
Her brother Danny, 18 and a few days before joining the IDF, is dead – a victim of the same road accident at Rehovot’s Bilu junction, the spot that also took the life of her grandfather in an accident nine years ago.
Ambet was on Sunday pronounced by her Kaplan doctors as “reborn.”
Despite her life having been in real danger for five weeks as she lay in the Rehovot hospital, they now believe the Gedera woman will live a totally normally life, without disability.
She recalls that she and Danny were in the back seat of a car driven by a friend of Danny’s, who lost control at the Bilu junction and smashed into a pole. But while the driver emerged unhurt, Danny was killed instantly. Ambet was thrown out of the car with severe pain in her abdomen and legs. After learning of his death, she lost consciousness.
She remained unconscious for three weeks in Kaplan’s intensive careunit, after which she was moved to the surgery and orthopedicdepartments, where she received treatment by doctors, nurses andphysiotherapists. Then she was transferred to the Beit LoewensteinRehabilitation Hospital in Ra’anana. Now she is home in Gedera.
“I owe my life to the Kaplan medical staff. I arrived as a body and nowI go home as a human being who was put all together again,” she said.Her treatments included orthopedic, plastic and ear-nose-and-throatsurgery. Both of her thigh bones had suffered multiple fractures.
The family came on aliya from Ethiopia in 1992. After they got settled,her mother’s father, Awaka, was killed at the Bilu junction less than adecade later. He was trying to cross the road to get to a bus stop butwas hit by a car. “We still don’t know exactly what happened,” said herfather, Mula.
Kaplan staffers credited their patient’s determination and thecooperation of a multidisciplinary team of medical staffers for AmbetMulau’s dramatic recovery.