Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1526110
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 1 SEPTEMBER 2024 DIARY OF A VOLUNTEER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13 We joke to our chaperone that he must have been next on the babysitting roster for the foreigners; he laughs and happily leads us out of the base toward the town centre. He insists on walking a few metres behind us, scanning the road ahead and sky above. The surrounding area is like many Ukrainian towns; large government buildings and community spaces stand empty. Street art and murals decorate walls and bus stops. We pass a park and at the entrance is a memorial for all the local men and women who have lost their lives since the start of the war. The portrait of a young boy looks down at me from the wall, barely 14 he looks as if he is posing for a school photo. In the park, we are alone. It is a sprawling space with wooded sculpture exhibits, old war memorials, tree lined paths and a huge children's playground. It is around 10am on a Sunday morning and not a single child brandishes their make-believe sword on the huge wooden pirate ship. All the swings stand motionless and the rounda- bout creaks in the breeze. I know there are still plenty of people living in this city, and yet the streets and parks are a ghost town. Where is everyone? There is some hustle and bustle in the hallway as a group are preparing for a trip to the local shops to buy supplies, and I ask to join them. As we're leaving the gates of the base a crew is returning from a patient evacuation from last night. Our driver im- mediately stops, and all the team jump out of the car to embrace them, greeting them like brothers, or returning heroes. I'm re- minded how dangerous the work they do here is, how they risk their lives to reach their patients, and the stamina required to work on the critically injured for hours on end, hunched over in a vehicle barrelling down bomb scarred roads at 140km per hour. The town is busy. Old women do their shopping and children eat snacks on benches while countless men in military garb smoke and chat on the street. Out- side the basic supermarket there is a Fer- rari parked alongside our ambulance and a military truck marked out as 'medic' with a cross on each side made of masking tape. When we leave the shop, it's raining and one of them, a stern tall driver called Kal- enda, asks: "Do you like the rain?" I nod saying, "I love the rain". He smiles back, "me too." I don't know it yet, but this man will be the driver of the ambulance crew I will join later in the day. Together we will stand outside a secret military collection point in a torrential downpour, surrounded by the walking wounded, staring at a rainbow in the sky while our patient is being gently navigated into the ambulance behind us. I'm the only Maltese left at the base now; my colleagues have both gone out with ambulances while I was shopping. Vitalii is sitting beside me in the rec room when the bombardments ramp up. The volume and frequency of the booming increases and I try to ignore it, but I can't help thinking about how familiar that sound is. I've never been to a warzone before but how can this sound be pulling at my memory. I realise that this louder version of the soundtrack that's been playing since I arrived at base, sounds almost identical to the Maltese fire- works that go off day and night as the festa approaches. I wonder if I'll ever hear them the same way again. As I'm lost in thought an extremely loud bang startles me; it's closer than anything I've heard thus far and is accompanied by a small shudder in the building. My eyes dart to Vitalii, who looks at me very seriously and says, "Chris- tina, that was a door slamming". His face breaks into a smile. I'm mortified and my face burns at my inexperience. A patient evacuation Finally, it's my turn on a patient evacu- ation. The ambulance crews are made up of three people per team. One is a driver, whose focus is on arriving safely at the patient's drop off location. They drive for approximately 10 hours at a time, often in the dark with no streetlights and damaged roads. The other is a paramedic, their re- sponsibilities are mainly to the ambulance itself, ensuring stocks are full, equipment is functional, the patient is monitored, and all the paperwork is in order. On my crew this is the fresh-faced Babenko who I've had little interaction with till now. The last person in each team is what makes MOAS so unique – a fully quali- fied, accredited and equipped anaesthesi- ologist. With me on ambulance MOAS 68, this is one of our youngest team members, Horb. I've been chatting with him across the day. Horb is friendly and open and I'm impressed by the way he switches be- tween his light exuberance and focussed professionalism throughout the trip. The presence of this skill on board means that MOAS can transport the most extreme trauma patients while sedated and intu- bated, saving them from long transfers in excruciating pain, or an inaccessibility to onward services due to a lack of patient stability. In some areas, MOAS is called for 80% of the 'red tagged' patients, at the less busy areas it's 70%. I ask what happens if a MOAS is not available for an intubated patient. Kalenda shrugs, "most of the time, they wait". Once we've retrieved our ambulance from its hidden storage location we are on the road, driving east, further toward the action. We will be going to pick up a patient at a discreet medical triage facility around 20km from the latest bombard- ments. It will take us around 30 minutes Christina accompanies the MOAS medics on a critical care evacuation