On Thursday February 24th 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine escalating the Russo-Ukrainian War which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. According to United Nations, as of May 13th 12 million are believed to have fled their home in Ukraine. Eight hundred thousand going south to Romania, with 300 still residing at a refugee center created by Galați University. This is where I headed to on April 24th with the non profit Mobile Medics International.
A drop in the ocean of the people in need.
The COVID crisis was just starting to ease and the university students were returning to in person learning when the invasion took place. “Dunarea de Jos” University of Galați made the decision to continue online learning and use the student dormitories to house the incoming refugees. Each dormitory building is able to house over 300 refugees. The refugees were originally scattered among three dorm buildings. By the time I had arrived they had been consolidated to one building, building C.
Arriving
The air was muggy and thick the morning I arrived. Kelly, an old friend and humanitarian, welcomed me into the teacher dormitory where I would be living for the next 10 days. Our reunion was brief as she was heading to Ukraine later that morning. Her team was composed of 20 Urban Search and Rescue Romanian volunteers. The plan was to staff ambulances near Odessa and transport the critically ill to the hospitals or a safe area. After their departure and a quick power nap, I joined my team consisting of a mental health nurse from Ohio, a pediatrician from Missouri and an EMT from Alaska.
The Galati Urban Volunteer Search and Rescue UVSAR office was on the bottom floor for dorm building C. A hidden room located halfway down the hallway. It served both as the UVSAR office and as the refugee clinic. As you entered the room you saw the UVSAR volunteers and two twin beds that straddled the room, covered with translucent sheets. At the end of the room, you could see the tools required for the clinic. A mismatch of bandages, a heart monitor, protective personal equipment such as gloves, stethoscopes, and blood pressure cuffs.
The previous medical team had identified patients that required follow up but other than that we started from ground zero. Our first task was to assess the 300 refugees who had been there about a month. New waves of refugees were expected any day. Due to a language barrier we had to create to a health assessment to identify the needs of the refugees. We translated it from English to Russian and with the help of the translators delivered them to the refugees by the end of the first day. We discovered that because Russian is understood by Ukrainians it was the best choice for translation.
Assessing and Translating
The following day we gathered the assessments forms and using Google translator identified the patients that required immediate treatment. We divided ourselves into two teams and started working. We had rooms that stated they required medical help. Each team had a Russian translator and young Romanian USVAR volunteers eager to learn anything medical. The Russian translator would translate to Romanian, the Romanian volunteer would then translate to English. And then we would backtrack the steps to communicate back to the patient.
Patient Care
My first family of the day was a single mother with her two children. A typical presentation. We only had two males of the 300 refugees. The men stayed behind to fight.
Two families were sharing a room and it held a total of four children and two women. One child with a history of asthma and no inhaler resulting in an anxious mother, the second with a viral cold. We had interrupted their school as we walked in. The school age children were gathered around a tablet. Propped up on the sole table of the room. We learned that the Ukrainian teachers were holding online lesson for the children while displaced. I took the ten-month-old out of her cot, with the mother’s permission, wiped her running nose and played with her. It sunk in that her cot is her only haven in this new home. We treated the two children with colds with assurance and made sure they had clear lung sounds. We also arranged for a pharmacy to fill the prescription for the inhaler and headed to the next patient.
A patient that required follow up based on the previous team was a quiet man with chronic leg ulcers. He needed bi-weekly wound care and dressing change. As I started to remove the old dressing, he jumped a little as my hand grazed his leg. I realized he probably had not been touched in some time. The goal was not only to provide wound care but to teach the UVSAR team how and why to do the dressing change. We wanted the treatment to continue after our team was gone. After that first day, I made sure to always embraced his hand, providing as much human touch as possible. By the time I left our hands locked together, reaching towards our wrists. I thanked him for welcoming me into his space and he thank us for helping Ukrainians.
Room 207: unexpected treasures
As we were walking to the top floor, we were pulled into our second room to see our next patient. He was sitting on the bench in the foyer, limp and vacant, waiting for time to pass. His wife was bustling around him and grabbed us. Communicating with hand gestures we knew she wanted our help. We nodded and followed her as she dragged him like a lifeless cape, his arms wrapped around her neck, the end of his tall body sliding on the floor, to their home now, Room 207. It was a flare up of Parkinson’s. Previously very capable man, the founder and chair of an NGO in Ukraine for people with disabilities, now unable to carry his own weight.
Treasures in a room…
As we opened the door to their room, we were overtaken by a their son practicing his violin. A talented musician, I requested he continued, but his preadolescent shyness kicked in. His mother’s scowl told him he should continue. I selfishly wanted to hear the beautiful melody during this dreadful time. As I listened to him play I was take back home to hearing younger sister practice.
Their entire life was encapsulated in that room. The one table scattered with boxed food, schoolbooks, and a brush. Depending on the hour of day it served as desk or vanity. And above the bed an oil painting which they carried by hand, a gift from the mayor for all the work they had done in the community. Everything they had built, a home, a career, a retirement, all taken away in matter of weeks.
The woman had pulled us aside because her husband’s Parkinsons was getting worse, and she was trying to get a medicine that had worked in Ukraine. I took note of the symptoms, completed a full assessment & history, and I took the name of the medication. I then jumped into the rabbit hole of looking for the medication in Romania. Thanks to Google translate and the help of the resident pharmacist at the dormitory I made his needs known.
The days went on
The following days we welcomed thunderstorms, which cleared the air but washed away the chalk art the children had previously done. During down time I found myself playing with them outside. They would make structures of carboarded boxes left over from donated items or mountains of snails. As I picked up a piece of chalk and drew a daisy near one of the rainbows, another girl wrote thank you in Ukrainian. We spoke through play.
The team gathered momentum with the health assessment to guide use. We would go from family to family.
The assessment form showed many of the refugees were having sleepless nights. How do help those in need in a span of 10 days I kept wondering what long term impact will our team would have?
Most of the refuges were and are in a standstill waiting for the war to be over. They do not want to leave the dormitory till they can go back home. But what does home consist of now? One expectant mother was planning on naming her daughter Liberty. She believed by summers end, her daughters due date, Ukraine would be liberated. The faith of the people lifted me.
Teaching
In between providing care we would head back to the UVSAR office and talk through the possible diagnosis with the young volunteer. The volunteers had dedicated their weekends to training and almost every evening to this cause. It was amazing to see the commitment of these young people to becoming humanitarians.
By day five we had seen most, if not all, the refuges that required an evaluation. And the next wave of refugees had yet to arrive. We asked our young helpers what they wanted to learn, and their requests spilled over. As a team we decided to hold a full day teaching session followed by a full day of simulations.
The UVSAR volunteers were not only providing aid to the arriving refugees but a good number of them were also heading into Ukraine to help. The photos do more justice than words.
In the End
I did not provide any life saying medical treatment, but we did make sure minor illness and injuries were handled on site. Our goal was to alleviate the impact of the refugees on the local infrastructure. We did open the communication between the department of health and the onsite UVSAR clinic. And make sure chronic issues were not overlooked. I did not get to see the beautiful sites of Romania, the mountains in Transylvania or the parliament in Bucharest. But I did get to see its heart: the people. The welcoming hosts, not just for our team but also towards the refugees.
The last day as I was getting ready to leave, I rushed back into the clinic to grab my water bottle. I walked in on a UVSAR volunteer teaching a newer volunteer good chest compression, arm straights, hands overlapped, at a rate of 120. That was it. The moment, I realized a drop in the ocean would continue to have a ripple effect beyond my little splash.
