DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine – Despite daily shelling, doctors at the war front have less work now than in early autumn, when they had about 20 people to treat per day.
This is
because the army is learning fast.
“Now we
don’t have to go out after every shelling because our guys learned how to run
and hide fast,” says Denys Sholom, who is stationed at the military unit in Donetsk
Oblast’s Debaltseve.
When he
gets an emergency call, Sholom puts on his flak jacket and helmet, picks up a
Kalashnikov and jumps into a shabby, Soviet-style ambulance commonly referred
to as a “pill,” and then he heads off to the front line.
Wearing all
this gear complicates giving first aid to the wounded soldiers. But since
medical staff has become a primary target in Ukraine’s eastern war, the
military doctors have adapted to become fighters.
Sholom, who
worked as an emergency doctor in Kyiv before he was drafted into the army, says
his job now much resembles what he did before the war. He says some areas of
Kyiv are just as dangerous as the war zone. “But here there is more of a chance
to not come back,” he said.
Sholom is
based at the military camp by the city of Debaltseve, which is one of the most
dangerous spots for the Ukrainian troops to be. The city is surrounded by the
separatist forces from most directions, leaving a narrow corridor for escape
west. Not a single day passes there without heavy fighting.
Since the
beginning of autumn, over 20 soldiers have been killed and 160 wounded in this
area, according to Serhiy Hrybachov, chief medical officer of the local unit.
Sholom
says that some 50 soldiers had serious wounds and could have died later in
hospitals.
At the
moment, the fighting is mostly down to daily fire exchanges, and soldiers
don’t even get to see their enemy. But it does not mean that the fighting is
less deadly: mortar shelling causes many fatal wounds.
Sholom and
his team drive the wounded soldiers back to their tent camp in dozens of
kilometers from the front lines for emergency treatment. The soldiers are then
sent to the city of Artemivsk, located 40 kilometers away. Any of these trips
can be deadly, but night-time ones are especially dangerous so doctors always
drive as a part of an armored military convoy.
Doctors in
Debaltseve only have two ambulances. They are jokingly nicknamed Anabolic and
Vitamin. They are typically parked by the medical tent marked with a red cross.
The tent has a makeshift operating table and a couple of beds inside.
The hardest
part of their job is losing a patient. The day before Kyiv Post visited the
medical tent camp on a recent day in November, one of the soldiers died of a
critical chest wound close to the heart at the surgeon’s table. He was one of
the three wounded soldiers that day, but the other two survived.
Sholom has
a hard time talking about losing a patient, it’s very obvious. He looks sad,
almost desperate. Often, this desperation is walled off with black humor.
Joking about the dead is one way to keep your head straight in a place where
death and grief are routine.
There could
be less of it if the doctors were better equipped. Sholom said the ambulances
are slow, driving maximum 80 kilometers per hour, and it’s not the only
problem. “We have no special medical channel so that one medical team could
know about another and communicate,” Sholom says.
Sometimes
doctors cannot reach the front lines on time if the army commanders think that
the risk is too great. Sholom believes this is stupid. “Why should my life be
more worthy than the life of that soldier?” he asks.
Sholom said
he does not do surgeries in the tent unless it’s a real emergency. He tries to
stabilize patients and send them to the big clinic in Artemivsk.
“Don’t
believe the tales about field surgery, there’s no point of cutting someone up
here when it could be done in Artemivsk at a normal hospital,” he says.
Often the
doctors have to treat colds, headaches, high blood pressure or scratches. All
these minor problems take longer to heal in field conditions.
Occasionally,
there is an odd surgery to perform. One team operated on their pet, a local
stray dog called Portos, who was seriously wounded after stepping on a
landmine.
All medical
supplies are kept in a dugout hole by the tent. Pharmacist Valentyn Vrakin says
“this is all from volunteers, nothing from the army.”
Sholom says
the army only supplies the field hospital with Nalbufin, a simple opiate
painkiller, and intubation bags for artificial ventilation of lungs, which are
useless because they come without the necessary tubes.
Dmytro
Veresh, a military doctor of the 101th brigade from Kyiv, who works together
with Sholom, says is critically short of equipment and medical staff because
civilian doctors often try to avoid draft.
Sholom says
on top of that doctors have to overcome a lot of bureaucratic hurdles, many more
than in civilian life. “When the whole world moves ahead, our army only moves
according to army regulations,” he says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
