Under fire from the enemy, with massive bleeding, a cut body and a crushed jaw – he was able to reach his own. And the doctors made efforts not only to save the warrior’s life, but also to restore his mutilated face. Complex reconstructive operations were performed by surgeons of the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center.
Hleb Lysytsky from the temporarily occupied city of Lysychansk, in the Luhansk region. The defender is 30 years old, six of which were spent in the war. Hleb voluntarily joined the ranks of the ZSU because he wanted to liberate his small homeland, and later transferred to the Luhansk border detachment. He fought in his native region and Donetsk region, where he was seriously wounded in January of this year. It happened in Bakhmut. The enemy then occupied strategically important positions. It fell to Hlebov and his brothers to return them.
“There were three of us, I went first. I had just gone over the hill when I heard an automatic queue. fell down He wanted to grab the machine gun, but his hand was no longer working. The bullet flew through and hit an artery. Massive bleeding began. While I crawled to our trench, the Russians threw grenades at me. One of them tore right next to the face,” Gleb recalls the circumstances of his injury.
The debris disfigured not only the soldier’s face, but also cut his lungs and stomach. Meanwhile, the Russians were approaching. When there were only a few meters left between the invaders and Hleb, and the bullets had already run out, he realized: they would either finish off or be captured. And at that moment, Gleb thought about his only son and that he did not want to leave him without a father. Therefore, he gathered his strength and crawled along the landing side by side with his comrades. They got out, but this was just the beginning of Hleb’s struggle for life.
In Kramatorsk, doctors connect a severely injured border guard to a ventilator. Three days in a coma, during which an ischemic stroke also occurs, that is, a brain infarction. And Gleb forever loses his peripheral vision. Then the doctors of Dnipro, Kyiv, and eventually Lviv join the fight for the warrior’s life.
Specialists of the Department of Maxillofacial Surgery meet Hleb at the NEZLAMNI Center. The patient’s face is deformed, and the plates that were previously installed in place of the crushed facial bones, unfortunately, did not take root. Osteomyelitis began, that is, infectious inflammation of the bone. Our doctors overcame the purulent processes, and then performed a second reconstructive operation. In two months, the new plates took root and the surgeons were able to undertake the next intervention – the implantation of the lower jaw, for which the bone was taken from the patient’s rib.
“If we had not performed all these operations, the patient would have had problems with speech and chewing, would not have been able to eat normally. Also would have endless purulent discharge from lower jaw, constant pain and swelling. Plus a visual defect”, – the head of the department Oleg Kovtunyak summarizes the complex case and the successful completion of the treatment.
At the same time, the head of surgery at the NEZLAMNI Center Hnat Gerych and his team are solving another problem – Hleb’s arm did not move at all after the injury. Because after healing, the nerve in the limb was pinched by scars. To release it, surgeons perform another complex operation called neurolysis. This intervention is also successful.
Currently, the defender has already undergone physical rehabilitation and went home. He is very happy that he can finally spend time with his family and see how his son grows. However, after recovery, Hleb plans to return to the army, because his native Lysychansk, like many other Ukrainian cities, has not yet been liberated.