Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
At 2022 Valentyn Chuchuk started life practically from scratch.
After his native village in the Kharkiv region was occupied he left via Russia and the Baltic countries, had the opportunity to stay abroad, but returned to Ukraine. Today he helps civilians affected by the war and veterans undergo rehabilitation in Ivano-Frankivsk, which has gradually become his new home.
For almost two years he has worked as a medical orderly at the Center for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Clinical Hospital and for four years at the Prykarpattya Regional Clinical Center for Mental Health. He says, “I have never once regretted that I came back here.”
Very often relatives need more support than the patients themselves
Valentyn Chuchuk has been in medicine for over 30 years. Before the full-scale war he worked as a medical orderly at the Kharkiv Regional Psychiatric Hospital, in the village of Strilecha, located near the Ukrainian-Russian border. After moving to Prykarpattya he joined the Prykarpattya Regional Clinical Center for Mental Health, and later joined the team at the Center for Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine of the regional hospital.
The field of rehabilitation became new to him. He had to study a lot: take courses, participate in trainings, and learn from the experience of Ukrainian and foreign specialists. He believes that the war forced Ukrainian medicine to adopt modern rehabilitation approaches even faster: “When I came here, I saw many people with severe injuries, amputations, and traumas. Honestly, I thought it would be very bleak here. But the patients undergoing recovery are great. They hold on so well. I did not think they would be so uplifted in spirit.”
Valentyn says his workday starts with the usual medical handover. Then — measuring patients' temperature and blood pressure, dressing wounds, inserting catheters, medical procedures, helping people with musculoskeletal disorders and those undergoing rehabilitation after injuries.
But the profession of a medical orderly, in his view, is not only about performing procedures, but also about human support — moral and psychological — about the ability to find the right words, to calm and comfort.
In Valentyn’s opinion, conversation often becomes the first step toward recovery. It is no less important than medicine or physical therapy. This is especially true for veterans undergoing long rehabilitation after injuries, because they adapt faster to new circumstances, and families must learn to live with these changes.
As he mastered rehabilitation, Valentyn attended a number of trainings conducted by Ukrainian and foreign specialists. At one such training he remembered a simple but effective piece of advice: don’t rush to help someone just because they use a wheelchair; first ask whether help is needed. “Very often relatives need more support than the patients themselves,” Valentyn notes, because the recovery process changes the whole family's life.
What is the hardest part of the job for him? He answers: “I can’t even say what is the hardest. For us there isn’t that. The hardest is for those who go through rehabilitation after serious injuries. And we are here to help them.”
Work he could not leave behind
24 February 2022 Valentyn Chuchuk met the day at home in the village of Strilecha in the Kharkiv region, located right on the border with Russia. “I saw everything with my own eyes, how everything was flying at about 4 or 5 in the morning,” Valentyn recalls. “This is my window — and already the border, meters beyond 150-200. There was a glow, such a roar. The power went out immediately, and a little later — mobile connection.”
Despite the start of the full-scale invasion he, like other staff of the Kharkiv Regional Psychiatric Hospital, continued going to work. He says they could not abandon the patients. Many of them did not even realize what was happening around them. Soon the hospital lost electricity, water, and gas.
“We could not abandon the patients. It was so cold — well, February, zero degrees in the wards. And there was nothing to eat for them,” Valentyn recalls.
The medical staff tried to cook for everyone themselves. At first the employees cooked at home while there was still gas, then on fires. Everyone who had a household brought whatever was left in the cellars.
For almost three months Valentyn and his family were forced to live under occupation. Russian soldiers regularly conducted searches, checked houses, and looked for weapons and Ukrainian servicemen. Valentyn — head of the community's hunting collective — understood he could be in particular danger: “Armed people came, separated my wife and me into different rooms, searched the house, the attic, the basement, the outbuildings. I asked what they were looking for. They answered: ‘nazis.’”
It was impossible then to leave for territory controlled by Ukraine. They had to get out through Russia. Together with his wife and mother, Valentyn set off: after Russia the route led through Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia, after which the family finally entered Ukraine through Zakarpattia.
At the Russian border their car was detained for almost eight hours. “They were letting everyone through, but they took me aside. Only later Latvian border guards said: ‘They wanted to take you. Didn’t you understand?’ And only then did it all sink in for me.”
Valentyn only stayed abroad for a few days while traveling back to Ukraine. He says he had the opportunity to stay in Europe, but without hesitation went back to Ukraine: “Many people stayed. But we decided to return here. And I have never once regretted that I came back.”
“I’m already one of the locals here”
Valentyn Chuchuk arrived in Ivano-Frankivsk in July 2022. He says he chose the city by chance: “We drove in here, and for some reason, I don’t know why, I stayed in Ivano-Frankivsk. And I’m very glad that I stayed here.”
At first, he admits, he constantly thought about returning home. But now he understands: there is nowhere to return to; the home he and his family built for almost five years no longer exists. He learned that the house was destroyed about two years ago. Before the full-scale invasion Valentyn had just finished building his own house, which the whole family helped to construct: “A little house, two stories, with an attic.”
Along with the house went part of their life. Like many Ukrainians in the spring of 2022, Valentyn was convinced he was leaving only temporarily: “We all thought we were leaving for two weeks.” So most things were left at home, and they took only the essentials. “You can’t take everything in a car. Many photos were left there, many discs, cassettes, flash drives. I thought I’d come back in two weeks.”
Despite what he went through, Valentyn says he felt at home in Prykarpattya from the very beginning and did not feel the stereotypes about “east” and “west”: “I was very well received here, both in this hospital and in that one. You can no longer say that I am a stranger here. I already have many friends here.”
Outside of work he goes hiking in the mountains with colleagues and takes part in group trips. He says that this is how the staff becomes a team not only in the hospital.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Професія медбрата — це не лише про виконання процедур, а ще й про людську підтримку та вміння знайти правильні слова для пацієнта і його близьких". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rupor.
