Paramedic of the Center of Emergency Medical Aid and Disaster Medicine of the Kharkiv region
because I understood: if I have already entered medicine, I have knowledge, two hands, I can help at least two people, then I must do it, there is nowhere to run. However, it was hard to explain my parents from Kropyvnytskyi why I was staying here and not going to a safer place.
We have never encountered such complex mine-explosive injuries and shrapnel injuries in peaceful life. We held classes on stopping bleeding at the substation, and we also learned how to work with one or another tourniquet. There was a lot of humanitarian aid in terms of equipment: body armor, tourniquets, hemostatic agents. We learned to work with it because we wanted to help and save as many lives as possible.
We were coming not only for patients with injuries from explosions, our ambulance was going to people with high blood pressure, fever, heart problems, heart attacks, strokes. People were surprised that the emergency services were working. They asked: "Wow, does the ambulance work even in such conditions?" And how else? If you need our help.
I remember an incident. The projectile flew into the man’s yard. He was cut by shards of glass. When it's the first time, you are kind of confused, but you do everything automatically: you put the gloves on, then tight bandages, stretchers, and bring the person to the hospital. But when children suffer from shells it is the worst thing. They are confused, they do not understand what is going on.
The girl was taken to the regional hospital in serious condition, and later she was taken to Germany by evacuation train. Later I learned that she had come out of the coma, and her condition had improved. The boy had a brain contusion, and then he started stuttering out of fear. I tell you this, but I still can't understand it. It shouldn't be like that. It is difficult to go to children even in peacetime, even when they have a cold, or simply – with a household injury. And here is the war. Such an experience has never been and should never be.
Now work is my life, like the life of all the doctors who stayed in Kharkiv. We united, we became one family, because it is easier to help others together and it is easier to survive all this horror.
