Somehow my last couple
of days are full of stories about extraordinary people living in our time.
Yesterday, it was Shavarsh Karapetyan (http://www.peopleofar.com/2014/02/08/true-story-of-a-real-life-superhero-shavarsh-karapetyan/) who made invaluable sacrifices to
fight the death.
Today, the story is
different: Elizaveta Glinka (more famous as Doctor Lisa) fights the death of
those who are destined to die. She builds hospices for incurable patients and
organizes medical and psychological help for people dying at home. Many in
Russia don’t understand palliative therapy (mitigating the pain and
psychological tension of incurable patients) and call it pure quixotism: why
waste expensive drugs and doctors’ time on fatal cases?
That’s why in Russia
many incurable patients become “outcast”: hospitals refuse to take them and
hospices are rare animals in the government system. At best, these people are
left to die in arms of their relatives who neither have appropriate medical
equipment at home, nor got specific psychological training.
For Doctor Lisa,
everything started from her mother being in coma for two months before she died
in Moscow. Elizaveta, who studied palliative therapy in the US and already
organized her first hospice in Kiev, experienced this negative attitude to
incurable patients in Russia in full. In 2007, she established a tiny fund Just Help that just helps everyone who
wouldn’t get support from anywhere else.
That was the moment when
Elizaveta Glinka turned into Doctor Lisa and started a blog that soon became a
link between people from all around Russia who wanted to help and those who
needed this help. People started donating small sums of money, clothes, toys
for kids, pampers, medicines, etc. Doctor Lisa posts not only list of needed
things, but also pictures of her patients, their letters and stories.
Doctor Lisa often says I’m not a journalists, I’m a doctor. But
in fact, she is more than a doctor: she is a master of last wishes. Listen to
favorite music, write a letter to the president and get a response, smoke a
last cigarette, dress up very nicely – she always finds the way to make patient’s
last days the happiest ones. One man with cancer used to live in a village and
really missed his farm: Doctor Lisa brought a real kid to his ward. He was
stroking the kid and crying from happiness… He died in a week.
Glinka helps not only
dying people: those living but helpless are all her patients. Her fund gives
food and medical help to homeless and other people in need every Wednesday near
one of Moscow train stations. And every Friday these people can come to a tiny,
basement office of Just Help and have
a real party with food, poems, songs, and stories. Doctor Lisa has volunteers
to share many responsibilities but she still personally bandages up dozens of drug
attics, alcoholics, and ex-criminals at Paveletskyaya Square. She knows them by
names, nicknames, and their stories: “amorous” Carmen who often gets bruised by
her lovers, mentally disabled Maxim who helps Doctor Lisa to distribute food,
Chechnya war veteran who dreams about writing a book, and many others.
Since last summer Doctor
Lisa, doesn’t get much time to write in her blog: she transports sick and
injured children away from the war zone in Eastern Ukraine and brings
humanitarian aid to kids who are left behind. Doctor refuses to make any political
statements. It doesn’t matter for her to which side she brings rescued kids:
she just believes that children should never see a war. So, every time she
succeeds to negotiate a short ceasefire, she takes a driver with her and
hurries to those who are waiting for help.
Maybe, Doctor Lisa does
fight the windmills and her patients will die sooner or later either from
incurable disease or from harsh Moscow winter and off-grade alcohol. Even from
the war, she can save maximum 5-10 children every raid… And still, Doctor Lisa
kills a fear of death: she gives hope and love to people who were left alone
face-to-face with their merciless destiny.
