In a small room at Sourasky Medical Center's Dana-Dwek Children's Hospital in Tel Aviv, the world's next superhero, Arseny Malavsky, waits. Despite writhing in pain, he smiles from ear to ear when asked what he wants to be when he grows up. "Superman!" he replies.
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Arseny has been dealing with a disease doctors in his home country of Ukraine have been unable to decipher.
He suffers from terrible stomach pains and serious cramping. He also has neurological issues that cause his head to droop and for him to experience tics.
Having landed in Israel 10 days ago, the Malavskys are now staying at a hotel in Tel Aviv. At the Dana-Dwek Children's Hospital, where Arseny was immediately received, doctors are performing a series of exams to appraise his condition.
Around a month and a half ago, Arseny's superpowers were put to the test when Russian forces invading Ukraine reached the suburbs of Odessa, where his family lived. Arseny's father is a captain for Israeli business tycoon Idan Ofer's international shipping firm. It was thanks to Ofer that Arseny and his family, along with 600 other Ukrainians, were able to flee Ukraine.
When the war broke out, Ofer resolved to save the lives of his employees and their relatives.
"We needed to escape in a complicated operation," Arseny's mother Svetlana says. "One of our neighbors drove us to the border with Belarus, which we crossed on foot. Afterward, we got on a bus that took us to the border with Romania. Another bus to the border with Bulgaria, and then we arrived at Varna, to safe harbor."
It was there that Ofer had rented hundreds of apartments in the Bulgarian city of Varna for his employees and their families.
"Throughout the journey, Arseny was writhing in pain and we didn't have medicine. All we could give him was vitamins that I took when we left the house," Svetlana explained.
Ofer and his wife Batia came to visit the refugees in Varna two weeks ago. According to Svetlana, Batia noticed Arseny was in pain. "I told her about the situation, and Baria immediately called Idan and told him about it. They spoke a bit with Arseny and then told me they would do everything to take care of him. By the next day, we were told we would fly to Israel and we would receive the best medical treatment."
Back in the hospital room, Arseny says he would like to go to Jerusalem because "I heard there are a lot of superheroes there."
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