Oleksandr Zhuravel is a 33-year-old defender from Poltava. He is the second patient in Ukraine with a bone-implanted prosthesis. After a serious injury and loss of a leg, he was in a coma for 11 days and in intensive care for another 2.5 months. And now he walks on a modern bone-integrating prosthesis, which he received at the NEZLAMNI National Rehabilitation Center, and wants to help his brothers.
Oleksandr Zhuravel worked as a veterinarian on a farm before the Great War. A month before the full-scale invasion, he began to prepare and buy the necessary equipment. So on February 24, he immediately joined the local Teroborona. And he retrained as a paramedic before being sent to Soledar.
Here’s what he says about the specifics of this job: “Being a paramedic is not that easy. Because, being a soldier, you worry more about yourself and not letting your partner down. When you are a paramedic, you have to make more difficult choices. You understand that this person may not make it to the stabilization point, and if you leave another, he may not live.”
Oleksandr was seriously wounded in January near Soledar, during the evacuation of a wounded man. That day, the enemy raised many drones into the sky, one of which tracked down the Ukrainian defenders. Mortar shelling began. One of the shells hit near Oleksandr. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the remnants of his right leg were supported by only a few muscles. In Dnipro, the mutilated limb is amputated, then he remains in a coma for another 11 days. Then he is transported to Kyiv. There are two and a half months in the intensive care unit. Then treatment in Chernivtsi. And for prosthetics and rehabilitation, Oleksandr is already sent to Lviv, to the NEZLAMNI center.
Oleksandr became one of the three patients who received an implant, to which the prosthesis is attached, directly into the bone. Such an artificial limb has a number of advantages. It is more sensitive and functional compared to traditional methods of prosthetics. Six months after the severe injury and loss of his leg, Sashko starts walking. He says that he did not even expect that he would be able to stand up so quickly.
Volodymyr Romanyshin, an orthopedic traumatologist of the center, is happy with the defender’s success. “He walks very well. He feels the possibility that he can step from the tile to the carpet, he even feels the tactile surface while walking. It’s cool!” – says the doctor.
Now, in order to learn how to walk well with a prosthesis, Oleksandr actively trains every day with a physical therapist. When he recovers, he says that he still wants to be useful to the front: “Brothers there, it’s hard for them, I want to help.”
It will be recalled that the first patient with osteointegrating prostheses was the 57-year-old captain of the ZSU from Dnipro Ihor Krupnov. He is an Afghan veteran, in 2022 he voluntarily went to defend Ukraine. He lost his limbs in the fall as a result of a car detonation on mines.
certificate
The UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center is a unique place where adults and children affected by war receive comprehensive qualified medical care. The center operates on the basis of the First Medical Association of Lviv – the largest medical institution of Ukraine, which includes two adult hospitals and one children’s hospital.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, over 13,000 wounded Ukrainians have been treated here, including 350 children. Among the directions of the center’s work: reconstructive surgery, treatment of burns, orthopedics, prosthetics, physical and psychological rehabilitation.
The center has its own prosthetic workshop. And in April 2022, a new rehabilitation building was opened here: it has seven floors with comfortable wards, rehabilitation rooms, state-of-the-art equipment and a swimming pool. Everything is for the best recovery of the wounded.
The mission of the NEZLAMNI center is to rescue, restore and rehabilitate Ukrainians in Ukraine. The project is implemented by the First Medical Association of Lviv, with the support of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine.