US Doctors Travel to Poland to Treat Ukrainian Children with War Injuries
Reporter Kristen Jordan Shamus and visual journalist Mandi Wright from the Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, have traveled to Poland to document a group of US doctors who have journeyed to Poland to treat Ukrainian children with burns and congenital abnormalities, the first such trip since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The doctors, from Michigan, Texas, Massachusetts, and Missouri, have operated on 20 children in the past week. Shamus and Wright will tell the children’s stories, revealing the tragedies of their injuries as well as the hope the doctors have brought them.
Leczna, Poland, is the site of the surgeries, and it is there that four-year-old Yelizaveta Nadolniak has undergone complex plastic and reconstructive surgery on burn scars, war trauma, and congenital anomalies. Yelizaveta, whose nickname is Liza, lives in a fantasy world where she believes the sounds of war in her homeland are simply the bass and timbre of rap music playing nearby. When she crossed the border into Poland, a country at peace, Liza asked her aunt, Ludmila Nativa, “Where is the music?”
Liza’s family lived in an older home in a small village near Mykolaiv, the southern Ukrainian city that has been heavily attacked by Russian forces. A fire sparked by faulty wiring caught the entire family unaware. Liza was burned across her torso, neck, and both arms. Her sister and another child were pulled out of the house before they could be badly burned, but when a window was opened to get the children to safety, it supplied more oxygen to the flames. Liza was lying in bed at the time of the fire, and when the window was opened, the fire grew. She lost consciousness and does not remember most of what happened.
On May 16, Liza underwent surgery in Poland to release the contracting scars that made it difficult for her to turn her neck and lift her arms. Her aunt did not tell her she was having surgery, only that the doctor was putting ointment on her. The nurses took Liza to the operating room while her aunt told her she had lost her passport and needed to look for it so that Liza would not be distressed with her leaving her side.
Whitney Roberts, a certified nurse anesthetist from Boston Children’s Hospital, brought a bag of small toys for the Ukrainian children, including a heap of stickers and crayons, a mini coloring book, and a small blue knit octopi with little nubbins for tentacles. The toys are a distraction and help put kids at ease before surgery. It worked for Liza, who held the stickers gleefully. Within minutes, she was sedated and ready for surgery. A couple of hours later, Liza emerged from the operating room with bandages from her belly to her neck. The toys Roberts gave her were piled up at the foot of her bed, waiting for her to wake.
The surgeries can vastly improve the quality of the children’s lives, restoring their ability to bend their arms and legs, use their hands, and turn their heads and prevent crippling deformities. But because they’re not life-threatening injuries, the kids can’t get treatment for them now in Ukraine. A team of U.S. doctors from Michigan, Texas, Massachusetts, and Missouri, part of a nonprofit organization called Doctors Collaborating to Help Children, traveled to Poland on a humanitarian mission to fill the medical void and offer hope to children like Liza.
To contribute to Doctors Collaborating to Help Children, go to dctohc.org/donations.
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News Source : Kristen Jordan Shamus, Detroit Free Press
Source Link :‘Where is the music?’ Quiet of Poland perplexes burned 4-year-old from war-torn Ukraine/