A Ukrainian American medic on the Maidan

A member forwarded us this account of a Ukrainian American medical doctor who spent some time helping out on the Maidan, Here is her first hand account of what she witnessed:

A few words about my colleagues in the medical field in Ukraine. I have nothing but great admiration and the highest regard for the work of the medics, doctors, nurses, paramedics, and volunteers here. Many lives were lost, but many were also saved at makeshift field hospitals all over Maidan, which varied from the lobby of Ukrayina Hotel, to the Musical Conservatory, St. Alexander's Roman Catholic church to Shato, a pub on Khreschatyk whose owner gave the restaurant over to the medical service. Slava nashym heroyam likaryam, medsestram i medikam!!

Some lives were lost by the medics as well. A young female field medic, wearing a white helmet with a red cross painted on it, and a white vest with a red cross on it, rushed onto Institutska street to help an older man who had been shot. As she was providing aid, she was shot by a sniper and killed. Many field medics and doctors were injured as well.

I was working at the trauma surgery unit we had set up at KMDA city hall. At around 10 AM we began receiving patients. Our room had three surgical "beds", there were about 12 others in the building. We received wounded with gunshots, severe injuries and burns from the shrapnel from the grenades. At one point all three of our surgeons were working on severely injured patients, one of which had such bad shrapnel damage to his right arm that we could see right down to the bones and he had no pulse in that arm..

The medics ran up to our door carrying a 17-18 year old boy on a field stretcher, one of the medics, bloodied up to her elbows, pressing a compress over his right upper abdomen. We had no other table, so we put the stretcher right onto the floor and started working on him. He had a gunshot wound in his abdomen, about 1 inch in diameter, and was bleeding so badly that the stretcher and floor were covered with blood. Pressure was applied onto the wound by the medic. We started IV's, started pumping in fluids. He was going in and out of consciousness, breathing rapidly and shallowly, pale as a ghost. 

He needed blood and an operating room. The bullet was still inside him, probably lodged in his liver, and his lung had collapsed. We had no blood to give him since our facilities consisted of file cabinets turned onto their sides for use as operating tables, no blood, very few surgical instruments, no means to give full anesthesia. He needed blood now. So we ran through the halls looking for someone with his blood type, and a young man 22-23 volunteered that he was a match. The nurse took blood from the vein of the 23 year old with a 20cc syringe, and we injected that blood directly into the IV of the severely injured boy. We repeated this three times, and were told there was a transport available outside. 

A medic and I carried the IV bottles and kept pressure on his wound, The transport was a minivan-there were no ambulances available, they were all busy. The driver drove through the streets, over sidewalks, the wrong way on one way streets, waving the medic's white vest with a red cross on it out of his window, yelling at the cars to move out of the way. We kept talking to the boy, keeping him conscious. He said his name was Vlad, he is from Kharkiv. 

After a wild 15 minute ride we arrived at the hospital. A wheeled stretcher was brought out and still holding the severely bleeding wound we ran through the hospital halls with him, the nurses yelling for the surgical room to be ready. Banging through the doors, we rushed into the operating room, I held pressure on the wound while the boy's clothes were cut off with scissors and ripped open by the surgical aides, and a surgeon asked to see the wound. When I removed the compress blood poured out of the wound and it made a sucking noise, indicating there was a connection with the lungs. A mask was pressed over his face and anesthesia was given, we transferred him to the operating table and the doctors at the hospital took over.

The medic (a girl about 18 years old herself) and I were literally covered in blood, we took off our surgical gowns and gloves, and picked up the blood soaked field stretcher to go back to work. When we came out of the hospital, the van was gone, but another young man standing outside volunteered to drive us back to Maidan.  In the car he told us his job with his wife was to man the hospital, find out who was being brought there from Maidan, find out what was needed for their care (medication, supplies), convey that to his contact and the supplies were brought over to the hospital immediately. He dropped us off on Maidan, the field medic went back to work on Institutska and I made my way back to KMDA to keep working.

Mine is but a drop in the bucket when it comes to what was done by the doctors, medics, nurses and volunteers. With tears pouring from their eyes, surgeons, gynecologists, dentists, nurses, anyone with any medical training at all tried their best to save as many lives as possible. Unfortunately over 100 people died. But many more were saved by the relentless efforts of my colleagues working in field conditions, on floors of hotel lobbies, on the sidewalks and streets of Kyiv, in the naves of churches, with no medical equipment or supplies. I am proud to be a doctor today. I am profoundly humbled by my colleagues and the volunteers with no medical training at all, by their dedication, tremendous efforts and energy. Thank you all and may God bless each and every one of you! Vichnaya pamyat for those who we couldn't save, and please pray for their souls as well as pray for the recovery of the injured. I don't know what happened to Vlad, if he lived or died, but I hope and pray that he survived and will be able to see the revolution realized.

Slava Ukrayini!  Heroyam Slava!

Ulana Suprun