As Ukraine enters the seventh week of war, some of its citizens suffering from the neurodegenerative disease learn every morning that their country is at the heart of a conflict.
While the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that 4.6 million Ukrainians have fled their country since the war began, this number mostly affects young people in good health. Many elderly or disabled people have been unable to leave the country and find themselves under fire from Russian forces. Some of them suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, which affects memory.
Such is the case of the grandmother of Olga Boichak, a Ukrainian sociologist who teaches at the University of Sydney. On the eve of her 90th birthday, the Ukrainian, whose granddaughter has kept her name secret as a precaution, finds out every morning when she turns on the television that her country is at war.
Stuck in an “endless loop”, according to Olga Boichak, the eighty-year-old then inevitably rushes to pack his bags and flee. Her husband, to whom she has been married for more than 60 years, prevents her. Loyal to his homeland, he is determined to spend the rest of his life in their small house in western Ukraine. So he tries to calm his wife down and hides the front door keys.
While her grandmother experienced bombing raids in World War II, Olga Boichak complained that she had to struggle with the “trauma of rediscovering the beginning of the war” every day.
wave of testimonies
The sociologist shared her grandmother’s story on her Twitter account on April 5, 2022. 15 days and 44,000 likes later, her story went around the world. It brought to light an unusual but visibly widespread phenomenon: the tweet sparked a wave of similar testimonies.
Liza Vovchenko says the daily life of her grandmother Rita, 82, who lived in the city of Kherson before the Russian invasion, has been completely turned upside down. “And people like her really need a routine in their lives,” she adds.
While Rita regularly went for walks, she finds it difficult to explain that her walks are now impossible, especially since the market she used to visit is now closed due to the war. Liza Vovchenko explains that when her grandmother “otherwise has all her intellectual abilities, it is difficult for her to remember information.”
Rita now lives with the young woman’s parents and her grandson in Dnipro. Knowing little about the city, she wants to go out less, which her family says is affecting her quality of life.
Another netizen, Tetiana, says that her grandmother Lyubov Tykhovska, who lives in Lviv, does not know at all that war has broken out in her country. The latest news she remembers is the coronavirus pandemic: convinced that the latter is still causing many deaths, the elderly lady remains confined to her home. “We tried to update her on certain events, but she immediately forgets or ignores them,” specifies Tetiana.
Since Lyubov Tykhovska has not followed the news on TV or radio for several years, her family has decided not to explain the current situation to her, so as not to upset her, unless the authorities call for the city to be evacuated. Lyubov also suffered from hearing problems and could not hear the warning sirens that warned of bombing in Lviv at the beginning of the war.
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