Reflections in Lviv, Ukraine – 3.16.23
UKRAINE CONFLICT This morning I was on my own in Lviv, a large urban city in the Ukraine. It feels no different like being in a city center like San Francisco, Budapest, Vienna, Hamburg, etc. I’m thankful we have a place to stay in the city center as it is so easy to be just another person in the shuffle [...]
March 21: Reflections from a Cemetery
UKRAINE CONFILCT Reflections on walking through a cemetery of fresh graves of Ukrainian soldiers.We did not start out looking for this place. Had we known we were going to come across it, we might have shied away. We just walked around a corner and there it was - we were shocked, yet drawn in. A mixture of numbness and nausea, [...]
March 20: To Save a Limb or Not
UKRAINE CONFILCT Spent the day visiting patients. Many are far from families. We brought oranges and chocolate, massaged some hands and toes. We joked and chatted through a translator and hope we eased some of the pain or at least provided a distraction. Some were clearly in a lot of discomfort. Pain is treated with ibuprofen. It is hard to [...]
March 17: Today we met the war
UKRAINE CONFILCT Today we met the war. We drove to Zytomyr to deliver ortho supplies to a clinic. On the two hour drive we passed bombed out buildings, houses, bridges. In the town we saw the school, apartment buildings, houses and hospital that were hit by missiles.The hospital that is still standing has many complex patients, injured by war.We met [...]
March 15: The Protez Prosthetic Center
UKRAINE CONFILCT The Protez Prosthetic Center is a joint project with two brothers, both Ukrainian, one living in Minnesota, the other here in Mukachevo. There are over 15,000 amputees and they need prosthetic limbs to heal. This organization has brought over 30 patients to the USA for complex prosthetics . There are over 750 on the waiting list. They can [...]
March 12: Delivering Critical Orthopedic Equipment
UKRAINE CONFILCT Our team is now in Mukachevo, western Ukraine. Our many bags of trauma supplies have been loaded into a van and are on the way to the front lines in Bekhmut where there are raging battles with many injuries of Ukrainians and Russians.We have delivered critical orthopedic equipment to a trauma surgeon here. He is a pediatric trauma [...]