'For 610 days I dreamed not to die': stories of Ukrainians who found themselves between life and death due to Russian attacks

Sergey Anatolyevich Ryzhenko is the head physician of the Mechnikov Hospital in Dnepr (Ukraine). This hospital receives the most seriously wounded. Sergey Anatolyevich speaks on Facebook stories of hospital patients - military and ordinary people who found themselves between life and death due to Russian attacks.

Photo: iStock.com/czarny_bez

Sergey Anatolyevich talks about the process of treatment and recovery of Ukrainian soldiers from the front line, about ordinary people who came under shelling and bombing, and about the fact that every seemingly hopeless case has a chance for a happy ending. The texts of the posts seem cinematic. The frame changes frame - an explosion, a battlefield, a past life, a loved one holding a hand, the sounds of medical sensors, words of prayer. But this is all in reality - this is all the life of Ukrainians after the Russian invasion.

Ryzhenko publishes his posts in Ukrainian and English. ForumDaily invites readers to plunge into an atmosphere of courage, pain, fear, despair, love and hope.

I want to return home with my feet...

"Darkness. Everything was covered in concrete.”

An enemy missile hit his house in Mirnograd, Donetsk region. Bogdan worked at the computer, he was 19 years old.

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After the explosion, the house fell into the abyss and collapsed like a house of cards. Heaped up with slabs, he found himself almost two floors below. Due to strange circumstances, the slabs formed in such a way that he found himself, in his words, “as if in a coffin.”

The rescuers got him out, but the guy couldn’t move at all. From Mirnograd Bogdan was taken to Mechnikov.

Resuscitation measures gave a powerful impetus to his recovery. Bogdan began to move his limbs, but some movements were still not dynamic. Spinal neurosurgeons and psychologists work with him and prescribe treatment and rehabilitation plans.

A rehabilitation center is preparing to open in Mechnikov in the coming days. There, at a new global level, movements will be resumed.

The diagnosis upon admission was so severe that no one dared to give it a chance. They were afraid of the worst thing - the lack of innervation of everything below the fractures of the cervical spine.

This is all very important for the future life of the 19-year-old Ukrainian.

He has everything ahead...

Right on the battlefield...

“After the explosion, I closed my eyes and waited to emerge from the darkness.”

On March 8, near the village of Tonenkoye (Donetsk direction), a soldier was seriously wounded in the neck with damage to the common carotid artery and jugular vein, and a thigh injury.

Military doctors in the city of Pokrovsk performed a complex operation to install a stent graft in the left carotid artery and sewed in the common jugular vein.

Then he was urgently sent to the Mechnikov hospital, where several complex operations were immediately performed - suturing the damaged brachial artery to the right, thrombectomy from the brachial artery. Immediately after this, the endovascular center stopped active bleeding from the damaged branches of the neck arteries by intravascular embolization.

In a difficult situation, military doctors and Mechnikov’s doctors, saving Vladimir’s life, did more than all the institutes combined. He could have died on the battlefield.

He was transfused with about 4 liters of blood.

He says that now his life will shine, it did not end there in the darkness, the angels were nearby...

Tomorrow Vladimir is going to be evacuated with a stitched throat, a crushed hand and a modest smile.

Wait, tomorrow will come...

“It’s scary to think what happened to me. It’s even worse not to see my brother Nazar, he’s only 17.”

There is despair in Yaroslav's soul.

Yesterday morning he and his brother went to the store to buy coffee.

Shelling.

Very loud, it exploded nearby on the right.

“We were knocked off our feet. Fell. I saw Nazar’s crippled body without signs of life. I could see bones from torn wounds that were filled with blood. Mom has five of us,” says Yaroslav. “The youngest sister Alexandra is 6 years old, she is getting ready for school.”

Yaroslav, who is 22 years old, from the Nikopol district, the village of Pridneprovskoe, was taken by ambulance to the district hospital, and then to Mechnikov, where two operations were performed.

The condition was stabilized overnight. Traumatologist Karim Shujaull prepares for surgery. The guy needs to save his limbs.

Only God knows what difficulties still lie behind their backs and dreams.

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“I kept thinking about my girlfriend Inna, about her kiss, and it was surprisingly enlivening.”

He took his only chance and survived.

He always looked into the eyes of death, saw the death of his friends, but did not give up. He applied tourniquets to the wounded arm and both legs. I saw a shrapnel penetrated into the stomach.

Next - Zaporozhye.

Amputation.

Then he was taken to Mechnikov in extremely serious condition.

A lot of blood was transfused.

Young traumatologist Kirill Suprunenko did the impossible - he operated on both legs, installed VAC systems, and saved the limbs. Said: “It will be good to run. I wish I had a prosthetic arm now.”

All this time, Vladimir fought with himself so as not to fade away. He took advantage of the only thing - love and faith.

A few days ago he didn't need anyone. Now Vladimir wants to live and love.

Today he will meet with his parents and beloved. And tomorrow he is going to be evacuated to Kyiv.

We want everything to work out for him to the point of tears...

For 610 days I dreamed of not dying...

“And every day there is fear and thoughts for three children, family and Ukraine, which I love, and I really want to live on.”

Nikolai is 50 years old, he comes from the Volyn region, and is a volunteer. Near Krasny Liman after the battle he was captured by the enemy. And then the worst thing happened.

I saw with my own eyes real Russian barracks, in which there were up to a thousand people in one room. Cells where there was no breath of fresh air, where they ate while standing. Porridge, bread and a piece of herring led to dystrophy, I lost 35 kg.

16 hours a day we stood and begged the Lord to give us the opportunity to return home. Nicholas went through five Russian concentration camps, similar to the concentration camps one reads about in books.

Atrophy of the lower extremities occurred from standing for a long time. He fell to the floor and got hit in the ribs with a rubber truncheon. Fears that family, peace and Ukraine will never return.

At these moments, as Nikolai says, I really wanted to die. He says that while he was eating standing up, he listened to the mockery and inhuman behavior of the zombified, cruel guards, who forced him to learn disgusting Russian poetry.

Returned.

He admitted that today, while waiting for his family at the Mechnikov hospital, he smiled for the first time and felt warm feelings throughout his body.

He says: everyone has their own happiness.

Today Nikolai gives his soul without reserve.

Torn to pieces...

Hospital in Selidovo after a rocket explosion. There were sick people lying there. Women were preparing to give birth to children. Doctors and nurses performed difficult operations.

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But an enemy missile hit a medical facility directly.

Alla Timofeevna, 50 years old, was on duty. After the explosion, she was taken to Pokrovsk in serious condition, and then to Mechnikov.

For two days, resuscitators have been trying to breathe life into her. Every three hours there are consultations, connection of new devices and operations. Alla is in a coma, she has a penetrating traumatic brain injury, brain contusion, and scalp wounds to her face and head.

Fracture of more than 10 bones of the facial skull, multiple shrapnel wounds of the upper extremities.

Daughter Maria is on the phone with the doctor all the time.

She and her children are in Selidovo - there is no one to leave them with, they are crying for their mother and grandmother.
This morning Alla came to her senses, opened her eye, and a tear rolled down it.

A woman who was on duty suffered a terrible missile strike that destroyed her entire future life.

Everything is scary, like in a war.

“I have nothing, nothing, if you don’t exist...”

Whispering in his ear, she holds his hand for a whole week, waiting for him to shake hers in return. He kisses the body of his beloved, broken by the rubble, and hopes that he will come to his senses.

He was outstanding, famous, young, handsome, respectable - now his body is on Mechnikov’s intensive care bed. Sixth day of coma.

Minutes, hours, days of hope in her little heart. Three weeks ago they got married.

After the explosion on the front end, their whole lives turned upside down.

He believes to the end in the fragile hope of salvation. There is a whole life ahead that cannot end.

For the sake of happiness, she ran to his arms and saw his lifeless body with many sensors.

How much suffering and trials the young family will still endure. But we know that faith in a miracle will preserve them forever.

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