40-year-old Oksana from Lyman, in Donetsk region, went through real hell: the Russians killed her husband in front of her 13-year-old son, who himself died shortly after in the hospital from his injuries. Doctors barely managed to save the woman herself with massive wounds.
It all happened on Easter. Then there were four of them in the yard: Oksana with her husband, son and grandmother. It was quiet on the street, no air alarms, until suddenly a rocket flew by. Oksana was thrown aside by the explosive wave. He remembers only the cries of the child. The man died immediately. The wounded – Oksana and her grandson, the grandmother with a shrapnel in her neck was taken to the cellar. There, they waited for rescuers for three hours, bleeding – their son was hit by a shrapnel right near his heart, Oksana suffered numerous body injuries. In the end, the rescuers managed to get the women and the boy out of the place of shelling.
Oksana was taken to the hospital in Kramatorsk, and her son and grandmother were taken to Sloviansk. There, they tried to save the grandson in intensive care, and the grandmother removed the shrapnel. Oksana’s condition was serious: chest injuries and severe injuries to her limbs. The left hand was the most affected. The woman was immediately operated on: the internal bleeding of the abdominal cavity was stopped and the massive wounds were sewn up. Oksana learned that her son was gone on the 3rd day after saying goodbye to him. She says that all this time she felt that something was wrong – her mother’s heart was breaking.
Oksana was transported from Kramatorsk to Dnipro, and then transported to Lviv. Here, ten doctors from the 1st surgical department of the Surgery Center, as well as traumatology and orthopedics of the Trauma Center of the First TMO worked to save the woman’s hand. Specialists performed six operations during which soft tissue defects were closed, skin was transplanted and, in particular, a complex plastic surgery was performed to move part of the soft tissues of the forearm to the area of the injured elbow.
Ahead of the woman is a long rehabilitation in order to restore the functionality of the hand.