5/3/2023 0 Comments Cold blood army of two masks![]() He wants to go back to the frontline but knows that he will just be a burden, he said.īelinsky added that many of his original brigade have been killed or injured. Speaking before the surgery began, Belinsky told how he often cannot sleep until just before dawn, reliving battles in his head. The anesthesiologist put a mask over Belinsky’s face and he drifted to sleep. Technicians readied a live broadcast that will help train Ukrainian surgeons. The next morning, Belinsky walked into the operating theater in shorts and a t-shirt and placed plastic covers over his shoes. ![]() “These individuals have suffered devastating injuries and we have to help them deal psychologically with what we can change and what we cannot.” It is part of the human condition,” said Adamson, the founder of Face the Future. “A person’s appearance reflects their inner spirit. Our hope is that at some point they leave happy and then I don’t see them again,” said Frodel.īelinsky got up, pulled his red and black military patch off his shoulder to give to Frodel, and gave him a bear hug.įor Belinsky and others like him, the surgeries are about much more than simply the physical trauma of their injuries. “You have to appreciate that the day they were injured is probably the worst day of their life and they need to understand that they are going in a positive direction. Belinsky said he wanted to fix his cheek implant, but that he needed more time before doing more work than that. Some back and forth followed through the interpreter, as future surgery options were discussed. Is that what you want?” Frodel asked.īelinsky shrugged. “We will try to lift the eye up to make it more symmetric with the other eye. This was to be his third procedure with the surgeon, usually based in Ithaca, New York, who has come back again to Ukraine. Brissett says he expects a five- to 10-year commitment from the surgeons involved.īelinsky stepped in for his consultation and gave Dr. Some of the surgeries the Face the Future team carries out in Ukraine will have an immediate impact.īut there are other cases, like Belinsky’s, that could require multiple surgeries and recoveries. Cho, who spent more than 20 years as a US Army physician, including a tour in Iraq, told CNN. ![]() Personally, I just must tell myself that all that I can do is the best that I can do and hope the patient understands,” Dr. These are some of the most challenging cases that I have had to deal with in my career. “I can make an opening that looks like an eye, and put in a glass eye, but they are never going to look like normal eyelids,” he replied. Raymond Cho, said by his colleagues to be one of the very best ocular plastic surgeons around, paused before answering. “Will you be able to make eyelids?” Dima asked tentatively, through an interpreter.ĭr. Where Dima’s eye should be, Ukrainian surgeons sewed over a flap of skin. Like most active-duty soldiers in Ukraine, he preferred not to share his last name.ĭima told how his convoy hit a landmine - the blast tore through the left side of his face. Twenty-seven-year-old Dima nervously stepped in. On the first day of consultations at the Ivano-Frankivsk regional hospital on Monday, the surgeons took turns assessing some 35 patients. There’s no place for people who are prima donnas, or people who have things perfect and just right all the time,” Adamson said. “We need people with a humanitarian spirit and the right attitude. This is also not their first mission to Ukraine. The doctors scheduled multiple surgeries over the week, holding video calls and exchanging x-rays and CT scans long before they arrived. The surgeries were planned for the relative safety of Ivano-Frankivsk, a small city in western Ukraine. They planned remotely for months with a Ukrainian surgical team. The foundation’s work included Russia until recently, but its efforts quickly pivoted to Ukraine after the full-scale war began.Īdamson says he handpicked the surgeons for the specific injuries they would encounter. Launched in 1996 by Canadian doctor Peter Adamson, Face the Future works across the globe - focusing on delicate reconstructive surgery. Anthony Brissett, the Ukraine mission director of Face the Future - a medical foundation. So, it really does not get any more complex than this, even in a combat scenario,” said Dr. “Typically, what we’re seeing here are blast injuries with multi-level injuries, soft tissue and bone and all of the surrounding organ structures. But what followed were months of painful and increasingly technical operations to try to put Belinsky’s skull and face back together.Įven in a country like Ukraine, with a sophisticated medical system and highly trained surgeons, it has taken a specialized US and Canadian team to deal with the extent of some of the injuries of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians.
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