«Doctors carried out kidney transplantation during the blackout, while surgeries under shellings became routine»
Lidia’s story about the challenges doctors and staff of the National Specialized Children Hospital Okhmatdyt faced during the war.
“My name is Lidia. I am 22 years old, and I work as a communications officer at the National Specialized Children Hospital — Okhmatdyt. It is the largest children’s hospital in Ukraine. It is also famous as the “last station” in national paediatrics because the hospital accepts young patients with the most severe conditions coming from all over the country. Okhmadyt is a national hospital of the 4th level. It is the highest estimation for national hospitals in Ukraine. We constantly have more than 600 patients in the hospital. These are children from 0 to 18 years old.
From the first day of the war, we accept people with injuries from all parts of Ukraine. When the frontline moved to the Kyiv suburbs, we remained open. We started to take patients not only under 18 but adults as well. Our eldest patient was 83 years old. The youngest one was a 1-month-old girl.
Although shellings have become slightly rarer, we still have lots of work. We adapted. We work calmly, catching up with the schedules and plans. We do not stop doing our job during air raids or when the air alarm goes off. If air alarms start in the early morning, we cancel operations planned for the rest of the day. If the child is already on the table, surgeons proceed with their work. When the air alarm sounds, patients go down to the shelter. In case of mass attacks on Kyiv (as it was on the 1st of October), we move all our patients to the basement, even those dependent on the ALV apparatus.
When the invasion only started, we were living in the basement. We do not suffer from blackouts as much as civils, of course. But, we had cases with short power cuts off in the middle of the operations.
On the 23rd of November, after the massive shelling, we had to carry out the kidney transplantation during the blackout.
The doctors could do nothing else but go on with the surgery because anybody knew when the power would appear again and for how long anaesthesia would continue to work. If a blackout, in the first place, we fix the light supply at the most critical points, such as the operating theatre and intensive care unit.
While working at the hospital, I saw a lot of things I could describe in one word only — horror.
It was HORRIBLE when we started to receive injured people in March in huge quantities. We got children who died not because they couldn’t overcome the illness but only because the Russian killers shot them down. It was so scary because we didn’t even have a chance to try to keep those children alive.
HORROR: when the girl told me that her brother had been shot down, and her mother was screaming in a bloodcurdling voice because her child had died. When wounded people from Bucha and Irpin arrived massively…
HORRIBLY: When amid the curfew, at night, we got a call from the Kyiv region, and they said they were taking injured children to our hospital.
There were three ambulances: two children with wounds in their heads and one — in his chest. I was awake to film this all because it was a war crime. Everyone in the hospital was awake waiting: neurosurgeons, intensivists, and anesthesiologists.
Then we got a call from one ambulance — the child was dead. They were not bringing it to the hospital anymore. They were driving now straight to the mortuary. Then, we got the same message from the second ambulance — the child had died.
We phoned the third ambulance to check on them, and paramedics said the Russians did not allow them to go through the checkpoint.
HORROR: A seven-year-old girl showed me a notebook where she had been drawing letters to her mother to the sky. And her mother had been blown into pieces in front of the girl’s eyes when a Russian rocket had hit their house. Another 14-year-old boy gave me an interview and said that his father had been shot down, right in front of him».
Recently, a girl named Zhenya visited us. A rocket hit her house. Her father died, but her mother was saved from under the rubble. It was a long time since it happened, about 4 to 5 months, but those people still slept in the basement every night because they could not sleep in a bed anymore.
However, looking back, I can say that the first 50 days of the war were the most difficult.
We lived in the hospital because we did not know when the war would end. Like the doctors, I just concentrated on doing my job because I knew it needed to be done. After some time, everything became easier, or maybe we just got used to it. Now, I focus on the fact that I am still in a better position than others. I do not work in Bakhmut, for example, where the shellings are constant, and there are ALWAYS many injured… I live for now and have been living during all that time in quite a safe place. Yes, I have seen a lot of things, but now I understand that there are much scarier stories.
If I see a five-year-old child who doesn’t have half of his back, they see a problem they need to fix quickly.
Doctors are very concentrated and calm in critical moments. They are very professional, and they own the most up-to-date techniques. At the beginning of the war, if they realized they needed more knowledge, they read lots of literature and various international researches on war injuries. Our doctors are very dedicated — they took their families abroad and returned home to work at Okhmatdyt.
I filmed everything I saw during this war and edited a film about how the hospital operated at the beginning of the invasion. I haven’t watched it for five months because I just couldn’t. Sometimes I start watching it and then quit it.
I can’t watch it till the end. Back then, we seemed to stand on adrenaline. We believed we would give it some time, give or take, and the war would end. We thought we would be back to normal life in three weeks.
For now, Okhmatdyt has probably gone through its most difficult period. Now, we are waiting for the girl from Kherson who has lost her eye. I need to meet a boy whose leg may be amputated, and last week I interviewed a boy from Kherson with an amputated arm. So, we still have lots of work waiting for us ahead…
We work hard to make children feel like children have to feel.
Our youngest patients, who have been staying in Okhmatdyt for a long time, have already gotten used to the air alarm. We were organizing the Residence of St. Nicholas in the hospital during the Christmas holidays. The event lasted three days. We had another Ukrainian celebrity visiting us every half an hour — it was like a real Disneyland. We have patriotic concerts every Friday, regular masterclasses, and beauty and health days. All these events add to the optimism, help to lift the mood and work as a psychological “release” for all our patients, doctors and employees,” says Lidia.
The story was gathered, written and translated by the team of volunteers at The Ukrainian View.
All the photos were provided by Lidia.
