"There was a siren so I ran toward the shelter, only to see that my home in Chernihiv suffered a direct hit," Katerina Chichova, 30, recalls from the bed in the hallway of the Kishinev hospital. "I don't remember how I got injured, I lost consciousness and when I woke up I had wires on top of me."
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Katerina was left on the street for many hours until she would finally be evacuated to a hospital. About a week ago she underwent surgery in a Ukrainian hospital, but this was not enough, so her brother David, managed to have her transfer to the Chabad House in the Moldovan capital, where she was could meet Israeli physicians who had arrived to help.
Dr. Oz Franko, an orthopedic surgeon who heads a medical delegation sent to the area under the auspices of "Lema'anam – Physicians for Holocaust Survivors," said that he realized she had to be evacuated to a hospital "as soon as I saw her leg." Another member of the delegation, ear throat and nose specialist Dr. Idit Teslar Gabbay said that she was "pale and in pain."
The following morning, the two doctors arrived again at the hospital to check up on her. They were greeted by Ira, the mother of the wounded, who was in tears. The doctors tried to console her and promised that her daughter would be fine. "We won't leave you until you are in an Israeli hospital; you already have a bed ready at Ichilov Hospital, and we just need to find a flight to bring you there," they told the daughter Katerina.
At that moment, Dr. Franko looked at the X-ray imagery of the leg and said, "We need another operation."
We said goodbye to Katerina and turn our attention to Ira. The doctor notices that she is limping. "This is nothing," the mother said, trying to shift attention to her wounded daughter. But the doctor insists and notices a strain or a possible fracture. "We have met hundreds of refugees in recent days. Most say they are fine but when we look at them further we notice something," Dr. Franko said. "I treated a woman who could not put her hearing device because she had an inflamed ear. She also said that "everything will be fine."
During normal times Lema'anam provides free medical services to Holocaust survivors. But now they are focused on treating the refugees, which include Holocaust survivors. The delegation that landed in Moldova on Friday comprises 40 members, most of whom use their vacation days for this.
Finding a flight that would take Katerina to Israel was no easy feat, but the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews made it happen. "We have started making daily flights from Kishinev to Israel with some 1,000 new immigrants entering Israel every week," the IFCJ CEO Ayelet Shilo-Tamir, said. Shilo-Tamir, who is in Kishinev, recalled that "When we heard from Lema'anam and Ichilov that there is a wounded woman who needs to be flown to Israel, took on this matter immediately and she is expected to join our flight tomorrow [Wednesday]"
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