The doctor’s stress levels are through the roof. This is a dangerous journey for children in need of palliative care under the best of circumstances. Now 12 of them are doing it in war.
Small and fragile bodies are lifted for the last time in the arms of tired mothers when they get off the bus. Some are carefully handed over to waiting doctors and nurses. For others, their health is too delicate and requires additional help to transport them safely to the train that will take them to Poland.
The medical staff hopes to prevent any of the children from experiencing even more pain – emotional or physical. One child’s health is in such poor condition that doctors tell us he may not survive the trip.
The medical team asks us to stay away, not to take pictures and not to try to talk to anyone until the children have stabilized. One by one, they descend gently onto 12 small cribs placed just inches from the ground.
Eleven of the 12 come from hospices around Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, once known for the best palliative care in the country. It is now one of the most bombed areas in the country, with Russian forces attacking residential areas there in the past week, hitting civilian infrastructure such as schools, shops, hospitals, apartment blocks and churches.
For days, Shushkevich, a pediatrician and palliative care specialist, sent phone calls from desperate parents to children left in the Kharkiv region. The parents’ request for help came when bombs fell around them. One mother shouted that without a ventilator and painkillers, her child would die.
“I could only tell her if she found her way to Lviv (in western Ukraine), then I could help her,” Shushkevich tells us, tears streaming down her face and her voice catching.
She still does not know if the mother and child are alive.
An agonizing journey
On board the train to Poland, Ira strokes her daughters’ fingers, locked in place.
“Yes, darling, everything will be fine,” she told six-year-old Victoria. Then she pauses. “I guess everything will be fine.”
Victoria has cerebral palsy and cannot walk. Her mother Ira told us that it was a “miracle” that they managed to get on the train. “It was unimaginably difficult to get out,” she said.
To board the medical train, Ira first had to travel from her village outside Kharkiv to the city of Lviv, where the families were instructed to meet. Ira held Victoria in her arms for most of the three days to get there, due to the panic of the others trying to escape and the trains so crowded that he couldn’t even leave her.
Victoria smiles in a huge smile that shines in her eyes every time she hears her name, even through her mother’s tears.
“She smiles at everyone. Because on the way here we only met nice compassionate people.” Ira he says.
The trip made Ira love her country even more – as if it were possible. It only makes leaving so much harder, she says.
“Even when you don’t expect help, everyone helped. They (strangers during the train trip to Lviv) gave us food, drinks, a roof over our heads, they accompanied us, guided us. “
“I don’t know how my legs held me,” says Ira. “And that’s only because she (Victoria) herself is strong. She helps me, gives me some kind of king of power, I guess.”
“She will not live without me. I know that, “she added.
Hospice on wheels
In the Kharkiv region alone, there are nearly 200 children in palliative care, according to Shushkevich.
Initially, Shushkevich tried to organize a train or ground transport to Kharkiv itself. But this proved impossible. It was too dangerous, the city was practically under siege. Instead, the families had to figure out how to get to Lviv before she arranged transportation to a safe place in Poland.
She kept in touch with the directors of the local hospices, who compiled a list of who she wanted to leave and who she could. Parents of children on fans had no choice – their children will not survive the long journey. Others were too sick to try.
Some, however, decided to take a risk. Shushkevich says some parents have told her it would be better to die on the road than under a bomb.
Shushkevich was the main organizer, mobilizing a network of medical professionals in Ukraine to help transport everyone to the meeting place in Lviv. In total, about 50 people were evacuated.
The Polish government and the Central Clinical Hospital in Warsaw have turned many carriages into a makeshift medical ward, including an operating room.
Shushkevich says: “As soon as I arrived and approached the bus and said, ‘we are here, you will be saved soon, we will take you out of this country into war … You can relax now'” she was greeted with a feeling of disbelief. and relief.
“Now there are many words of gratitude, there is joy, there is hope for life,” Shushkevich said.
“Each of these parents says he left his city of Kharkov only temporarily, that each of them will return when there is a chance that he will rebuild this city from scratch as soon as the war stops there, as soon as he can live there again. They say it with such love for their homeland. “
The doctor is no stranger to gratitude: she has heard her parents thank her for saving their children. But this time, she says, it’s different, the words have different depths.
As the train crosses Ukraine in Poland, Ira receives video from a neighbor in Kharkov.
“They said the whole city was destroyed in an hour,” she said, her voice trembling and her eyes filled with tears.
“There’s not a single house. Do you understand? Not a single house. It’s just a pile of bricks and that’s it. It’s not a war, it’s a destruction. It’s a destruction of people.”
Ira tries to call her husband, mother, father, sister. Nobody picks up.
“What happens inside a person when his whole life is falling apart … it doesn’t turn into someone else’s life, it’s just …” her voice trailed off. “You just don’t want to believe it.”
As the train leaves for Warsaw, the flashing blue lights of the ambulances are reflected through its windows. They did not report an emergency and did not respond to a bomb. This is a sign that they have arrived to save what is left of their children’s lives.