Chachai Sintrasuat, a 36-year-old from Thailand who worked as a foreign labourer in agriculture, was the sole survivor of a tragic incident that occurred two weeks ago, in which Omer Weinstein from Kibbutz Dafna and four other workers were killed by a rocket strike.
Chachai himself was closer to death – he was in critical condition with a fatal injury to the neck artery, bleeding massive amounts of blood. He received dozens of blood transfusions both in the orchard where he was injured, in the IDF helicopter that evacuated him to Rambam, and in the trauma room where he arrived in critical condition. Besides the neck injury, he suffered shrapnel wounds all over his upper body and his legs were crushed.
The trauma doctors at Rambam, who have seen hundreds of severely injured patients in their professional lives, said Chachai had little chance of survival, and even less chance of regaining full consciousness after his brain suffered from such extreme blood loss. But for the healthy man, it was a stroke of luck, and after emergency surgery, he slowly improved in intensive care, sedated and on a ventilator.
Yesterday (Tuesday), the doctors concluded that he is able to breathe on his own – and they removed the breathing tube from his throat. In a remarkable coincidence, the return to breathing occurred just as Saiphon, his devoted wife arrived at the department, having been flown to Israel with the cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Insurance Institute, and the Thai Embassy in Israel. And then Chachai, who had not yet been informed of the deadly tragedy and the loss of his friends – smiled.