A Holocaust survivor received the COVID-19 vaccine from a very special doctor: her granddaughter

A few decades ago, in his North York bungalow, Francis Sacks’s arms shook lot after lot after lot of chips for his grandchildren as they laughed and played in the kitchen. A few decades before that, these weapons moved in whatever way was necessary to survive the Holocaust.

So, last month, those 98-year-old arms were in the hands of a doctor who gave Francis the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Most of the doctor’s face was covered with a surgical mask and facial protector, but a printed photo helped to remind the elderly – who suffer from dementia – who the doctor was.

“Jordana! Jordana! Francis cried when he realized he was his granddaughter by his side.

Over the mask and through the shield, Dr. Jordana Sacks’s eyes filled with tears.

“She gave my father life and then he gave me life and now I am helping her to survive,” says Sacks of her boyfriend, who is affectionately known as “Fela”. “It didn’t go unnoticed.”

Sacks, a family doctor and professor at the University of Toronto, did not plan to give the vaccine to his own grandmother. At the beginning of the pandemic, Sacks continued to work at her family clinic, and as the winter went on, she decided she wanted to contribute more. When York County Public Health called on doctors to help them with vaccines in the new year, it was easy to respond.

Incidentally, one of the facilities to which Sacks was assigned was the nursing home where Fela lives. You might consider it luck, but the Sacks family think of it as “beshert” – Yiddish for “destiny”.

Sacks says that Fela understands that there is a virus, but does not understand its full meaning or how it is related to why people do not visit it as before. Last spring, residents of Fela’s home could meet outdoors, but with Sacks’s busy work schedule, it had been difficult to coordinate a visit. Then there was an outbreak of COVID at the establishment, so Fela’s family moved her to a relative’s apartment with a caregiver. When it was safe for Fela to return, Sacks would stand outside and wave to his grandmother at the window. “I only saw her in person three or four times in the past year,” says Sacks. For her, the window may well be a gorge.

So in mid-January, when Sacks found herself on the other side of the window, she made the most of it. She told her colleagues about the family connection and quickly found the consent form that Fela would need for her vaccination to ensure that she would be the person to administer the injection. The printed photo was a suggestion that Sacks’s sister, Jennifer, had made the night before.

Sacks knew that she would not have much time with Fela during the actual vaccination – due to the timing needs of the Pfizer dose, there would be a line of other elderly people who would need it as much as her beloved grandmother. Most of the time together took place before the vaccination, when Sacks was able to do FaceTime to his parents, which Fela virtually sees and recognizes well, despite his dementia.

The time it took to administer the needle was short, but Sacks says his impact will remain with him forever.

“As a child, she’s Bubbe – you don’t necessarily realize the survivor aspect of the story. My parents didn’t like to talk about [the Holocaust] when I was a child. Only when I became an adult and became more aware of these things did I really realize and appreciate what she went through. ”

Sacks says that Fela opened up about surviving the Holocaust to one of Sacks’s three boys a few years ago, on the anniversary of his release. Sacks filmed the conversation on his phone in tears, as he watched the two ends of the family tree sitting side by side.

Today, it is difficult to imagine a major highlight in Sacks’ career. How do you rate the provision of this gift to someone who has opened the path of your life?

“It’s unbelievable,” she says. “If we could teach that same resilience to our children, it would be incredible.”