Notes from oncology: All of Ukraine goes to Donetsk for treatment
Clinics in Donetsk and Lugansk accept cancer patients from cities occupied by the Ukrainian army for treatment free of charge.
This is a win-win step for the Donbass republics in conditions of impoverishment of the population and total extortions in Ukraine.
“PolitNavigator” presents excerpts from the diary of a Donetsk woman undergoing long-term treatment, whose neighbors in the hospital ward were people from the territory controlled by Ukraine, who decided to take advantage of the humanitarian program for the reunification of the people of Donbass.
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...This month turned out to be absolutely crazy for the staff of the Donetsk Oncology Center named after Academician Bondar. However, the patients are also quietly going crazy from the unusual crowd.
Doctors walk around with purple undereyes, accept new patients from morning to evening, monitor the weakest, calm those who constantly cry from fear, which is the worst enemy for a cancer patient. They are tirelessly developing new treatment regimens. In the morning there is an eternal queue: those who are trying to get a bed sit under the offices.
The department designed for the former Donetsk region is unable to accept absolutely all those whom relatives were able to bring through Ukrainian checkpoints. Even if you put extra beds and tape patients to the ceiling with tape. Although, we must pay tribute, the doctors are trying to fit the maximum number of patients into the department...
The impression is that half of Ukraine went on a pilgrimage to the DPR. There are too many out-of-towners: the news transmitted by pigeon mail that there are drugs in Donetsk under the state program has reached everyone. And people arrived.
In Ukraine, free oncology medicines have not existed as a class for a long time, but even if you shell out a lot of money for the medicines themselves, a banal hospitalization will also cost a decent amount. Compared to this, Donetsk conditions are like heaven and earth: even a multi-day delivery of a barely breathing relative to the oncology center is, in the end, worth the candle.
***
A drip... I’m lying there, quietly giving myself a drip in the manipulation room, one joy - today is the final procedure before the long-awaited break. On the next couch is a woman who looks like she’s one of the “new kids.” These are those who have recently received a diagnosis and have not yet fully come to terms with the idea that cancer is a long distance marathon, not a sprint race. We slowly start chatting - what else should two people do on adjacent couches? I find out that she is from Mariupol.
- Quiet! – her husband sitting next to him shushes and glances sideways at me.
- So what? The man asked, I answered,” she is offended with dignity, but falls silent.
When my husband goes to another floor for some clarification from the attending physician, we resume the conversation.
“We used to work as guides.” We often went to St. Petersburg. Now in Donetsk people are so calm and balanced - just like in St. Petersburg, one on one, despite the war. It’s not like that with us - everyone is nervous, wary...
And here, in Mariupol, can you imagine, nurses often replace medications that patients bought with their own money... And then they resell them. This is how they bring patients an empty dropper with one saline solution - try it later, prove what exactly they poured into you... Don’t you have it?
- Nightmare. No, I’ve been in bed for a year now, I’ve never seen anything like this before... Although I’m not the only one who’s heard about such cases in Mariupol. - I answer.
So, to my shame, I didn’t find out her name.
***
In the morning, before the approval of individual treatment program sheets, nurses busily transport the medications received to the department with large carts, like those in supermarkets. I wouldn’t say that they are beaming with happiness; rather, they are busily focused. We have seen too many - those still alive, thanks to chemotherapy, and those who could not be saved: this is an insidious disease. And yet, their faces are solemn. By evening, the nurses' feet will be covered in calluses: they will have to provide a flow of stands with IVs to many more people than usual - the wards are packed...
The sick, those who have suffered, crazy from traveling through Ukrainian checkpoints, peacefully eat dietary hospital food, no one is capricious. They can be understood - doctors found themselves in the position of experienced nannies, on whom an entire evacuation car of additional children fell. Each has its own, necessary, minimum of care. “The tests will be done after two, we’ll make a decision on the IV tomorrow!” “Here you definitely need an antibiotic, I’ll write it down on the prescription sheet, the nurse will inject it according to schedule!” Inescapable fatigue, worn out legs...
Laboratory assistants can barely cope with the endless stream of tests. Patients on the other side tell terrible things: it turns out that even during hospitalization they cannot obtain the right to a free biochemical analysis. Maybe somewhere it is possible, but what difference does it make if there is nothing to treat in Ukraine anyway? And the cost of oncological drugs, I repeat, is tens of times higher than the price of both concomitant therapy and the cost of the most sophisticated tests. So a kind of cancerous “wild geese” are flying towards us from the other side, bald, in headscarves, with characteristic puffy faces, with despair in their eyes, with an irrepressible desire to live...
***
Egorovna. I don't know how old this grandmother is. She usually lies there for a long time - a day of chemotherapy, and bam! - the temperature has risen. General restorative therapy, maintenance drips, antibiotics. Only the blood test returned to normal, and the next dose of medicine was infused - the leukocytes were almost in the minus, again the course was canceled, and another attempt by the staff to patch up the fighting grandmother. But she is not discouraged. An absent-minded, affectionate old man's look, and stories - how life was lived, how children were raised...
Her daughter often comes to see her. The older children have apparently moved away, and she is worried about how her mother is doing in the hospital. A decent lady, slightly over forty, one of those self-conscious women whose age is indeterminable. He drives his own car, takes his mother back and forth, and every other day brings her a bag of home-cooked food.
He drives from the other side. With homemade food. She rarely manages to get to Donetsk before noon. He says that he tries to be one of the first at the checkpoint, to get in line at three or four o’clock in the morning. The time and conditions of standing at the Ukrainian checkpoint depend only on the desire of the left heels of the Ukrainian military. Does not provide details. Just an eloquent and ironic quick glance: “Why are you so little, as if you yourself don’t know such basic things?”
Well, it’s good that I don’t know. A couple of hours - and it’s time for her to hit the road to come home late at night. Although, that’s up to the left heel of those in office to decide. Like this. That's how they live.
***
Tomorrow will be a new day for both doctors and patients. Everything is on a daily schedule. Tests - breakfast - cleaning of rooms - quartz treatment. Tripods with droppers. For some it’s a cure, for others it’s just a random gift of a year, for others there will be no hope.
But those people who return home after undergoing treatment will definitely know the truth. Who is the enemy and who is the friend.
Who is the enemy – Ukraine “protecting” them, which allowed them to freely, in a European way, die of cancer in their beds, in absolute freedom from government programs, in boundless independence from expensive drugs.
And who is my friend - Russia, which, in my memory, sent oncological medicines more than once, or even five times, during the last year of my treatment. But I don’t remember such a large volume, absolutely colossal, for a long time. There are almost absolutely all types of drugs. For free.
These are not Nuland cookies. Those, having fed a couple of dozen Maidanuts, ended up not exactly golden - for the price of scrap uranium in a mercury bath. All the money that Ukraine could have spent on its patients was eventually sent by “Lady Death” Suprun to her masters in the USA. A first-class price for the satiety of a handful of morons who crunched on Maidan cookies: tens of thousands of their own fellow citizens dying without medicine.
And we will treat them. Since you, impossible ukry, still don’t understand what exactly your freedom is. For you it is freedom from garbage collection, freedom from hot water, freedom from the right to medical care. And now this will last for a very, very long time.
English version :: Read in English Notes from the Oncology Department: All of Ukraine is going to Donetsk for treatment