(NPR) – Wildman also wrote about the expert medical care Orli received — and the unwillingness of some doctors and nurses to speak openly and realistically about what she was facing. Wildman believes the medical establishment tends to view the death of a child as a failure. As a result, she says, “there is a reluctance to face the idea that medicine has limits. … Children’s hospitals really are always advertising that they will cure children.”

Wildman says that Orli’s illness and death made her question her own Jewish faith: “I had to redefine what God meant to me. It couldn’t be waking up and saying a prayer in the morning or praying for something specific. … I had to really see it in the divinity of people who went out of their way to help us and that weren’t afraid of us.” (Read More)