The power of humanity: Passion for nursing reignited amid the throes of war

Just two weeks prior, Russia escalated its war against Ukraine (which started with an invasion and annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014), resulting in a humanitarian crisis in Poland as Ukrainians fled the violence.

“My mom said, ‘We can either cry at home or cry as a family in Mexico’,” said Kichigin, whose mother is Ukrainian born. Her father is Russian born. They were worried about her maternal grandparents, uncle, aunt, cousins and family friends living in and around Lviv.

Kichigin left for Mexico having already connected with a Ukrainian church that was collecting donations of supplies near her home in Dublin, Ohio. Finding a mission organization ready to mobilize and take her on was much harder. 

Kichigin had volunteered as a University at Buffalo undergraduate nursing student with Remote Area Medical in rural Tennessee and had always wanted to volunteer again. This trip, though, had personal meaning — and urgency.

“We [her family] had thought the war would be over in 24 hours, that Russia would just take over that quickly,” Kichigin said. “It was the following week, when we saw it wasn’t ending soon, that I felt like a had to do something and started looking for places to take me.” While concerned for her safety, her husband and parents understood and supported her need to go.

She eventually connected with Love4Ukraine, a group organized by a New York City-based doctor experienced in leading volunteers to disaster zones; Kichigin was recognized immediately as an asset for her nursing experience and fluency in Russian and understanding of Ukrainian. Word came while in Mexico and she immediately began coordinating with the church at home to pick up donated supplies. She would have one day between arriving back from Mexico and leaving for Poland.

“I was able to travel with a lot of first aid supplies and medications, and anything we didn’t end up using we donated to logistics warehouses who could distribute supplies in Ukraine,” said Kichigin. Her employer at the time, Ohio Health Urgent Care, was supportive of her taking this leave.

The team of volunteers Kichigin traveled into Poland with were a group of physicians, a student, a photojournalist, a logistics coordinator and a Polish language translator. Once in the country, they packed all their supplies into a van and drove to Przemysl, a small city in southeastern Poland less than 10 miles from the border with Ukraine. The team would travel often to Medyka, which is the border town where refugees were crossing. Her time in Poland was a whirlwind.

“There are experiences that, while you expect them, you just can’t prepare for emotionally,” Kichigin said.

Over two weeks, the volunteers’ days were filled with the practical and personal needs of thousands of displaced elderly people, women and children flooding into two refugee sites — a converted big-box store and a school. It would turn out that most of the assistance they provided came in the form of humanitarian aid and compassionate support, rather than treating wounds and physical trauma.

“Watching people cross through the border was difficult for me,” she said. “All I could imagine were my grandparents walking towards me.”

The medical volunteers provided triage, diagnosing and treating cases as simple as colds, asthma flares and sleeplessness and as complicated as chest pains and high blood pressure in people with a cardiac history. The rules of a Polish nonprofit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance bound them from giving medications other than over-the-counter medicines. COVID-19 was still a significant risk, as was the practical truth of the living conditions: Rotovirus tore through the center, and then a lice outbreak required everyone to leave the larger refugee facility while it was thoroughly cleaned.

“We gave out a lot of melatonin and valerian root for people who, despite being exhausted, could not get to sleep,” Kichigin said. One young woman remarked that her first night with the center was the first in a month’s time when she was able to eat and sleep. The clinic team was also able to refer people to the nearby hospital for more urgent concerns. 

“I pictured that we would be setting up a clinic to just help medically, but it was just as much about connecting with people who needed compassion. And logistics, a lot of logistics,” she said. This work included how to move supplies, coordinate care at multiple sites simultaneously and help coordinate moving families from a refugee site to a home.

Most of the children did not have many medical needs and were naïve about the larger situation, happy to play outside together with dolls and balls.

By the second week, Kichigin acted as bridge guiding a second group of volunteers mobilized by Love4Ukraine. While visiting the school-based refugee center, a mother approached asking them to examine her newborn. He was ten days old, and she wanted them to check whether his umbilical cord was infected (it was not). She had come to Poland from southwestern Ukraine, bringing her other three children and giving birth after arriving. Now she was preparing to meet her husband at the border to return home.

Kichigin encountered the family a short time later when they were prevented from entering Ukraine. The newborn was not permitted to cross without a passport. The frustrating bureaucratic issue eventually required the woman to travel to another Polish city where she could obtain an expedited passport, while two of her older children returned to Ukraine with their father.

Kichigin and two other volunteers did at one point briefly cross the border into Ukraine; she went along only after calling her parents and receiving their permission. Past border security and across the No-Man’s-Land was a near-empty border town with an abandoned medical tent and few resources. 

Many people fled Ukraine so quickly that prescription medications were left behind, creating a set of cascading issues sometimes amplified by one cultural perspective: people of this region (like her own parents) often do not take daily prescribed medicines unless they feel ill. Kichigin did her best to connect them with logistics volunteers who could help identify their missing medications and obtain refills.

One of her last patients, a kind older man, came to the medical clinic during one quiet, overnight shift. He complained of a bad headache, chest pains, and generally feeling unwell. Having just brought his daughter and grandchildren to Poland, he left behind in Kyiv two older sons who were expected to fight and his wife, whose parents refused to leave.

His stress reached a crescendo. His blood pressure was dangerously high, and she detected a significant heart murmur. He could not recall his exact diagnosis but did tell Kichigin that he sometimes took Carvedilol when his blood pressure was high. He also told her he had been due to have heart valve surgery the week of the invasion.

“He started crying, and I thought, ‘No wonder this guy is having all these symptoms’, so I just focused on helping him to lie down and destress,” she said. They talked through the night about his family and grandchildren. He also told her about how, as a younger man, he had worked at Chernobyl and that his doctors believed radiation exposure following the plant’s accident contributed to his heart murmur.

“He said that home [in Chernobyl] was taken away from him because they had to relocate, and then he said, ‘Now this home is getting taken away because of the war, and I don't know if I’ll ever have another’,” Kichigin said.

In the spring of 2022, Kichigin had spent the prior two years working through COVID-19 as a nurse practitioner in a high-volume urgent care clinic. Managing the non-stop pandemic pressures left her feeling burned out and disconnected from patients.

When Kichigin was interviewed by local media outlets hours before her trip, she told them her biggest fear was not being able to help enough, and she says she did feel that way immediately following her time in Poland. But the experience re-sparked her passion for helping people.

“During that trip I was very attuned to the holistic approach of patient care,” she said. “And my eyes were opened to the abstract concept and power of humanity.”

Over the past year she has kept in touch with the kind older man – Vasily – and sent care packages. His sons are fighting in the war, and one suffered a traumatic brain injury, but he and his wife are currently safe in a cabin on the outskirts of Kyiv. It is there in the woods where they are happiest, he had told Kichigin during their late-night talk, adding that he loved watching his wife collect mushrooms (her passion). On that night, Kichigin saw in his smile not just how much he loved his wife, but how happy it made him to share these stories with her.

“I have always been interested in mission work and happened to have a personal connection to this cause,” she said. Today Kichigin is reengaging with patients — and, she said, humanity — as a nurse practitioner with Ohio Health Blood and Marrow Transplant center.

She is still watchful of the situation in Ukraine and constantly in touch with her family there, and said, “If you offered me a month vacation free in Tahiti or a volunteer week in Poland, guess where I’m going.”

By TERRA OSTERLING