Lysychansk teacher injured in Russian attack undergoes reconstruction surgery in Lviv
A 59-year-old teacher whose eye was injured by a Russian projectile has undergone a reconstruction surgery at the Unbroken (Nezlamni) Rehabilitation Centre in Lviv. [The Unbroken National Rehabilitation Centre treats war-affected Ukrainians, offering reconstructive surgery, orthopaedics, and robotic prosthetics, as well as physical, psychological and psychosocial rehabilitation for injured military personnel and civilians. The project is run by the First Medical Union of Lviv and the Lviv City Council with the support of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine – ed.]
Source: First Medical Union of Lviv
Details: Olena Svietlova taught chemistry, biology and health science at a school in Lysychansk.
On 20 June 2022, she was caught in a Russian shelling on her way to gather linden blossoms in a local park. A projectile fragment hit her eye. Ukrainian military medics gave Olena emergency medical treatment.
Olena was then transferred to a hospital in the city of Dnipro, where she remained in a coma for three weeks. She was later transferred to the Unbroken Rehabilitation Centre in Lviv.
"At first, when Olena found out how much damage the Russian projectile did to her face, she didn’t want to live. She couldn’t look at herself, with that hole in the middle of her face. She no longer had one of her eyes and the top of her nose was missing too," Olena’s doctors say.
Doctors from the Maxillofacial Surgery Department performed a complex reconstructive surgery on Olena, grafting a piece of skin from Olena’s forehead onto what was a hole in her face. Olena only found courage to look at herself in the mirror after that initial surgery.
Olena also completed a body-oriented psychotherapy course at the mental health department of the Unbroken Centre.
"Before, Olena lost sensation in the right half of her face, and felt that her head was being crushed as if by a tight helmet. Olena says that with each [therapy] session sensations return to her and she feels calmer. She has a better sense of her face now, and a greater self-acceptance," the doctors say.
Olena even took part in a magazine’s photo-project about women whose bodies and faces were injured in the war.
Olena now lives in a modular town for internally displaced people in Lviv. She continues to teach her Lysychansk pupils online – they are scattered across the world now. During the online classes, Olena keeps her camera off; she doesn’t want the kids to see her face just yet.
Still, she remains hopeful that the next reconstruction surgery will help her. Surgeons will work on fixing the defect in Olena’s nasal dorsum bone and the sub-orbital area. They will use either an artificial prosthesis or cartilage from Olena’s rib.
"We will also think about aesthetic reconstructive surgery. We have fixed the main defect, the hole [in Olena’s face], now we can work on her appearance. Since Olena was admitted, we’ve worked with patients with even more difficult injuries. The war forces us to very quickly develop our reconstructive surgery expertise," Oleh Kovtuniak, head of the Maxillofacial Surgery Department at the Unbroken Centre, says.
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