Memorials

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Maidan Square is the central square in Kyiv.  It is the site of the major protests since Ukraine regained its independence, including the Euromaidan protests.  One of the first things that you see when you enter Maidan Square is the impromptu memorial garden for those who lost their lives defending Ukraine from the Russian invasion. When soldiers are killed, the families or other members of the fallen’s unit will place a photograph, a small Ukrainian flag, or other memento with the name and their dates of birth and death.  This display started with a few dozen of memorials, and now it has tens of thousands of soldiers memorized. 

The first time I saw the memorial area, I was mesmerized by the sight of it.  So many pictures of young men whose lives were cut short.  The faces were often smiling, sometimes they would be looking tough, sometimes their faces were blank, as if they were caught unaware when their photo was taken.  And every time I return, the site is larger. 

There are also similar sites in many cities.  In Mykolaiv at a central square where a Russian missile struck a government building to start the war in their area.  Cherkasy has a site, and so do many of the smaller cities.  Even the villages will memorialize their losses.

I think back to the soldiers that we lost in Iraq.  We would hold a memorial service for each service member our units lost.  I was always moved and saddened by the loss.  But the scale is so much greater in Ukraine, with 20, 30, or 40 times as many lives lost. 

I came to start dreading coming up to the memorials.  There is so much death.  There is so

Much pain for their families. So much potential lost that I would cringe when I would look upon them. But I would still go up to them and look upon those faces and pray that this all may end.

Back to Kyiv

​Back to Kyiv

After we finished our last clinic in Cherkasy, we returned to Kyiv.  With a long morning clinic and taking our lunch, we got on the road by mid afternoon,  By the time we approached Kyiv, it was quite dark.  Not only was this past sunset (4:00 PM) but all the city lights were off..  You had many buildings lit by generators and most of the safety circuits (streetlights, stop lights) powered but It is still strange to see so many dark buildings. 

Still, most people go about their business in what is their new normal.  Electricity can be off for up 12 hours, but many have storage batteries which they can use when the power is off.  It just involves planning for when to charge the batteries and when to use them.

Water supply has been disrupted the whole time we have been in Ukraine and that is the case in Kyiv.  The water comes out from the tap, however it isn’t fit for drinking.  Any time the water pressure drops to a certain pressure, the pipes will have a back flow from the ground water into the pipes.  You can usually tell by the smell of the water,  You can use it for washing and bathing, but not for drinking, brushing your teeth or anything which brings the water into your body.

Soon after we arrived in Kyiv, we were off for Krakow, Poland by the overnight train.  Most of us will fly home directly from Krakow but I will stop off in Munich for a few days with a very good friend who lives in Germany before I fly home.  I will post once more once I collect my reflections on this trip.  Thanks as always for following along with me.

 

Cherkasy

​We have moved the narrative up to Cherkasy.  We arrived after a 6 hour drive.  It is a fairly large city with about a half million inhabitants located in the center of Ukraine.  In many ways it is a lot like Kansas City.  It has a strong agricultural base with additional  industry..  It has universities, fine restaurants, sports stadiums and refugees (well, Kansas City used to have at least some refugees).  It is also missing one thing we have in Kansas City, regular electricity.  The last several days, Cherkasy has only had power for ½ of the time due to Russian attacks on Ukrainian power infrastructure.  It is not something that the citizens of Cherkasy hadn’t seen before.  They are well equipped with generators and experience in managing without lights or electricity.  Fortunately, it hasn’t been as cold as last winter, and the thermal heating plants have avoided most of the destruction.  The people are handling it pretty well. Even without power, people go to the mall.  Many malls and free standing stores and most restaurants have generator power.  In some malls, only some of the stores have generator power, but people make do with portable lamps.  Even without power, people still sit in coffee shops and catch on their email. 

The patients that we see are internally displaced persons (IDP’s) which are refugees within their own country.  They have many of the same problems as the villagers that we saw.  Indeed, they are the same people except that they were driven from their homes by Russia’s invasion.  We have had a long relationship with these IDP sites, and it is again fun to see my own handwriting from prior visits. 

We only have three clinics in Cherkasy and then we will end our clinic time and move back to Kyiv before moving on.  Thanks for following on with me.

Why we came here

​This is why we came here period. We have seen 6 clinics in the villages around Mykolaiv. All of them have been occupied from several months to a year by the Russians in 2022 with a harsh health toll for the people. We have seen many people with high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart attacks. Sadly, that's about the same as the first times that I visited.  Sometimes it is hard to see progress in primary care, but I have seen several patients from my previous visits.  They proudly announce that they have seen me before and offer a sail and sometimes a small gift. One of them made a friendship bracelet for me and another offered a jar of homemade spread. When people who have so little give you a gift, it is something special.

The roads en route to the villages are really rough. There has been little maintenance performed on the roads except to fill shell holes. When driving, we would just dodge the bigger holes, most of the time. You can still see where these villages were shelled. In fact, we used converted buildings for some clinics,  because the original clinic building had ben destroyed.

I Mykolaiv, we also got to experience extended electrical blackouts. These blackouts  are getting longer and more frequent, but the people are adapting. We visited a mall to try and find a replacement wrist watch band only 20% of the stores in the mall had adequate lighting. The rest operated by portable lamp. But habits die hard. There are two ladies sitting in a closed coffee shop in the mall basically working on their phones.

We are next off to Cherkasy to kick care of people in the refugee centers. A lot more driving but again, it is worth it. As always, I appreciate your prayers. Thanks for following along.

In Mykolaiv

​Mykolaiv,

We made it to Mykolaiv after 9 hours on the road.  We had enough time to eat and get ready for the clinic the next day.   I won’t use the names of the villages in which we hold clinics.  The Russians monitor all social media posts in Ukraine, and they monitor telephone communications.  If they can identify a location, they can subject the village (and us) to drone attacks.  We are at the outer range of the more sophisticated Russian first-person-view drones, so we need to be careful. 

We will conduct 6 clinics in these villages, seeing 50-60 patients a day.  Our role in the clinics is to provide the primary care that is denied to the population due to the disruption of medical supplies, destruction of clinic buildings, and the lack of local medical providers.  In many conflict zones, more people die from disruption of primary care than from kinetic injuries.  Heart attacks, strokes, and pneumonia kill more people than bullets or shell fragments.  Global Care Force is stepping in to fill that primary care gap. 

Thanks for supporting us.  Please pray for all the people affected by this unjust war.

Rick

 

Team  arriving at a village between Kherson and Mykolaiv

Kyiv!

​Greetings from Kyiv,

We made it into Kyiv yesterday on the overnight train from Poland.  It took about 10 hours to traverse eastern Ukraine on the sleeper train.  Normally, I find the overnight sleeper car pretty restful.  However, with my back injury and the rough state of the train ride (lack of maintenance due to the war), my sleep was pretty disrupted.  We made it to our hotel in Kyiv, dropped our belongings and hiked around the city.  It was wonderful to see our Ukrainian team.  There was very little turnover but I did get a new translator.   Maryanna is relatively new to medical translating but has her medical degree in psychiatry, so she has a wonderful base of knowledge. 

Not too much about Kyiv has changed from my last trip to Ukraine.  People are still going about their lives although it appears that more stores are supported by backup electrical generators.  There are more scheduled electrical outages although people have learned to accommodate them.  You can still get great coffee on the street, and the restaurants are fabulous.  We have not had any air raids during our 24 hours in Kyiv which is a little unusual, but welcome.  The van ride to the south will take about 9 hours and I don’t look forward to that.  But it will bring us to where we will see our patients.  And that is why we came here. 

Thanks for following along.

Rick

The memorial located in Maidan Square in Kyiv is sadly larger than my last visit.

BACK TO THE UKRAINE - DEC 2025

DECEMBER 1, 2025 

It is now time to start our Blog again. I am currently in Munich on my way to Ukraine for
another medical mission with Global Care Force. The path that I took this time significantly differs from my prior trips.

This spring, I fell in my house, injuring my back. Initially, I wasn’t particularly concerned, but the pain continued to worsen, and I consulted my primary care physician. I found that I had broken my back! 

As the pain continued to worsen despite significant narcotics and muscle relaxants, I was sent to a spine surgeon with a set of X-rays suggesting a spinal fracture. He elected to treat me with a kyphoplasty (kind of like mud jacking) to treat the fracture. Unfortunately, the first surgery had only made things worse with increasing pain and new leg weakness!
At this point, I felt that I couldn’t live this way. I feared living the rest of my life like this and what it would mean for my family and for the ministry where I go to places that others wouldn’t go. I prayed and received the advice of friends and family. I then sought a second opinion from a different surgeon to see what could be done. He suggested a much more radical surgery involving the fusion of 4 levels of my lower spine that would restore my strength. However, he said that the surgery would be very high risk with a 40% chance of death, paralysis, chronic pain, heart attack (and the list went on). I went back to prayer. I agreed to proceed and put my life in his hands with the faith that I would fully recover.
He operated on me the next day, for 6 hours, and it was a success.

In the recovery room, I was told that my leg strength had returned (although I have no recall of it). The recovery has been rocky and long due to the pain and medication and the extent of the surgery, but Jo kept reassuring me that I was alive and I could walk. I hoped, no, I knew that eventually I would fully recover. I knew that God had performed a miracle for me through the surgeon's hands. I am not there yet, but I am still improving, and the surgeon has cleared me to return to Ukraine to resume my medical mission.

It will be an interesting time with Russia’s attacks on the heating/electrical systems, the ongoing Russian infantry assaults, the US peace proposal, and the HUGE corruption scandal in the Ukrainian government. I won’t have any shortage of subjects to write about.
Once in Ukraine, we will return to the villages we have visited in the past. It will be good to see the team members again and to take care of patients in need.

Thank you for following me in this mission. God bless you.

2 months, 2 surgeries, 8 bolts, and 2 titanium rods later