Already two months after losing his foot, 34-year-old defender Serhii found the strength to stand on a prosthesis – at the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center.
Serhiy Yevtushenko comes from the village of Tynne, Rivne region. Before the Great War, he worked as a construction worker. But already on the first day of the full-scale invasion, he voluntarily joined the territorial defense forces. The first year he served in his native region – on the border with Belarus. And this year, in April, the defender transferred to the 3rd separate assault brigade, which is fighting in one of the hottest spots in the Bakhmut district. On June 13, Serhiy was seriously wounded there.
“We were going to change guys. The fellow who was walking ahead was blown up by a mine. I ran to help him and did not notice that there was another mine right next to him. One wrong move and I’m blown too. I remember every second. I hear a click and the whole earth flies up with me. After recovering, he saw that there were no toes on one leg. That’s how a small mistake can be very expensive”, – Serhii recounts with sadness.
He put a tourniquet on himself and crawled across the mine-strewn ground to the evacuation point. Next – three hospitals, in each of which surgeons tried to save the fighter’s leg. The end point in the treatment was the NEZLAMNI center in Lviv.
“Serhiy came to us in serious condition with signs of infection in his foot and lower leg. After an examination by doctors, in order to avoid the spread of infection, a decision was made to repeat the amputation of the left lower limb,” says the center’s surgeon Vladyslav Bogutskyi. And this decision was correct, because the wound healed successfully and Serhii was able to stand on a prosthesis only two months after the injury.
Physical therapists say the warrior is showing fantastic results. After mastering walking on a prosthesis, the defender first wants to visit his comrades, with whom he was blown up together on landmines and who lost both limbs. And later he wants to return to the army to finish this war. “This is a holy matter. We must do and will do what our ancestors could not do during the last 300 years – drive out the enemies so that they no longer interfere in our affairs, and win our independence,” he says.
Hundreds of people suffer every day due to Russian aggression, therefore, in order to make their treatment and rehabilitation comfortable and accessible in Ukraine, in Lviv, at the UNBROKEN National Rehabilitation Center, a multidisciplinary team works with every Ukrainian, providing surgical, physical, psychological and psychosocial professional assistance . Thanks to the support of donors, a prosthetics workshop was opened and bionic prostheses are installed, as well as a new modern rehabilitation building: it is 7 floors with the most modern rehabilitation equipment. Every year, 10,000 Ukrainians will be able to receive help here.