Our Story

Before the war, Tetiana Yudina lived with her daughter Yulia, an employee of Avdiivka Coke, in Orlivka village near Avdiivka. The 60-year-old woman worked as a storekeeper on a farm.

When the shelling began, Yulia and her child left for Kryvyi Rih, and Tetiana did not want to leave home.

16 October is forever etched on the family’s memory. The power went out in the house, so Tetiana and her neighbours went outside to check the power supply. Suddenly, an enemy shell landed in her yard. The woman sustained wounds to the head, shoulder and legs. “A fellow villager put a tourniquet on my mother’s leg, it saved her,” Yulia recalls.

Ambulances do not go to the village – it is dangerous. Tatiana was taken to the medical center in Ocheretyne by rescuers of the Ministry of Emergencies. There she was injected with painkillers and sent to the hospital in Myrnohrad. The woman underwent surgery to amputate her left leg below the shin.

Yulia received a call from her colleagues at Avdiivka Coke when they learned about her mother’s injury. This is how Tetiana got into the prosthetics program of the Saving Lives humanitarian project and the Prosthetics Support Project in Ukraine.

The program specialists immediately advised the family on what paperwork was needed for prosthetics. Now Tetiana is being treated in Myrnohrad, as her right leg is also plastered. As soon as the fracture heals, the woman will be ready to go to get a prosthesis in order to get back on her feet as soon as possible. They are already waiting for Tetiana in the clinic in Dnipro, where she will undergo prosthetics and rehabilitation.

“We are happy to be included in the program. This is a great help. We really want to get mom back on her feet. And she wants to, because she is an active person and cannot imagine living a sedentary lifestyle,” Yulia says.