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Андреева Ж. (en)

Андреева Ж. (en) 150 150 Doctor I.L. Chernikovskiy

I want to express my deep grat­i­tude to the onco­colo­proc­tol­ogy depart­ment where I had an oper­a­tion. It does not smell like a hos­pi­tal! Here, even on the faces of peo­ple who, after an oper­a­tion, bare­ly move their feet, there is no expres­sion of inescapable suf­fer­ing. They love life and work for life here!

My doc­tor Savanovich Nina Vik­torov­na needs a sep­a­rate men­tion­ing. She deserves not a brief review but a seri­ous essay. Nina Vik­torov­na seems quite young. And the first thing that comes to mind is: «God! So frag­ile, so beau­ti­ful! What is she doing here, in this refuge of pain, suf­fer­ing, in this field of strug­gle with the inevitable?» But this is only until you become her patient. I do not want to say «patient» because you meet pri­mar­i­ly with the eyes of a human. They look at you not as an organ sen­tenced to resec­tion, an inter­est­ing case for a sur­geon, but as a close mate. You imme­di­ate­ly find your­self under guardian­ship, you are treat­ed kind­ly, respect­ful­ly by encour­ag­ing eyes of a sis­ter, a daugh­ter, a grand­daugh­ter, a girl­friend. They make pre­scrip­tions to you, explain in acces­si­ble lan­guage what will hap­pen to your body in the course of treat­ment, patient­ly answer ques­tions from rel­a­tives, friends, and even draw for clar­i­ty. You are allowed to com­plain, to be a lit­tle whim­sy — the doc­tor’s response is always com­pas­sion­ate and effec­tive. You feel pres­sure in your chest — she is call­ing a car­di­ol­o­gist; intesti­nal prob­lems, stitch­es are aching — she will sort this out. And the next thing you see: the car­di­ol­o­gist is already here and lis­ten­ing, the nurse on duty makes an injec­tion .… And the next morn­ing a snow white, smelling of spring, sun­ny Nina Vik­torov­na will flut­ter into the ward. And anx­i­ety gives way to con­fi­dence — Nina Vik­torov­na will do every­thing in her pow­er to save, and in hope­less cas­es, pro­long life, with­out caus­ing unnec­es­sary pain, nei­ther phys­i­cal nor mental.

Even reg­u­lar­ly hav­ing two-three oper­a­tions per day she makes her ban­dag­ing her­self. I know from my own exper­ince — this is a spe­cial psy­chother­a­peu­tic ses­sion: first praise is giv­en then a gen­tle touch with a play­ful “patience, now I will tor­ture a lit­tle bit” and a manda­to­ry smile — every­thing goes as it should and will be even bet­ter! She can appear on the thresh­old of the ward on Fri­day around 21:00 with a pile of fold­ers in her hands, with a slight­ly disheveled hair­style and a very tired look — olny then her real age comes through for a moment but then the inevitable smile — and you see that in this tired­ness there is a keen plea­sure, because she dreamed about this pro­fes­sion from child­hood because she is need­ed, because patients love her and rel­a­tives are grate­ful, because she is in her place. And she can­not do with­out it! And you can be sure she will say: “If you need some­thing, call me and tomor­row I will come and see how your seam is!» And it becomes eas­i­er for you to live. But if you, the patient, are not a blunt con­sumer of med­ical ser­vices are focused on your sores, then it will be dif­fi­cult for you to fall asleep after the door of the ward clos­es behind Nina Vik­torov­na. Because you know, tomor­row is Sat­ur­day, your doc­tor has a legal day off; and this young beau­ti­ful woman gave her phone not only to you, but to all her patients … Sat­ur­day comes and soon you hear how the nurse on duty is already call­ing her, report­ing that patient N is .… , etc. And my doc­tor, hav­ing bare­ly made it home, advis­es some­thing, decides, appoints … I imag­ine how I am dis­charged, and some­one else comes to my place on the same day with his or her com­pli­cat­ed case. And the ques­tion aris­es: where does she take strength? How is it restored? When is she rest­ing? Do her col­leagues and boss­es under­stand that they are deal­ing with a unique per­son and specialist?
I am a patient with expe­ri­ence, I can say: today, among forty-year-olds and younger health work­ers, there are most­ly those who sim­ply ful­fill their func­tion­al duties. To those who go beyond the frame­work of “pro­vi­sion of ser­vices” the atti­tude is wary, sus­pi­cious or iron­ic. I want to believe that the head of the depart­ment and the hos­pi­tal man­age­ment sees, under­stands, appre­ci­ates and encour­ages such rare peo­ple. They need spe­cial care. By virtue of tran­scen­dent ded­i­ca­tion they are sen­si­tive to injus­tice and feel it as a dis­re­spect for the cause they serve. Atten­tion and sup­port make them stronger, they are ready to work many times more than required. And in the oppo­site case — burnout, loss of mean­ing, some­times leav­ing the pro­fes­sion .. Although not every­thing is cer­tain about my ill­ness, I am grate­ful to fate for bring­ing me togeth­er with Nina Vik­torov­na Savanovich. This is great luck! She not only heals the dis­ease but also the per­son. Let many more patients be lucky to be her patients and for as long as possible!
Andree­va J.
via Oncol­o­gy hos­pi­tal №62 website