Three strokes, a coma, clinical death and severe amputation – the war story of a 22-year-old defender

At just 22, Heorhiy Raskaley was gravely wounded near Bakhmut, losing an arm, enduring a coma, clinical death, and three brain hemorrhages. Doctors gave him slim survival odds, predicting lifelong blindness.

Plunged into severe depression, suicidal thoughts tormented him. But with support, he overcame the darkness, making an astonishing near-full recovery. hromadske details his harrowing journey back to light.

"We had to bite into that ground"

Irpin resident Heorhiy Raskaley signed a contract with the Armed Forces two years before the full-scale invasion. He was only 19 at the time.

The full-scale war caught him at a combat post on the Donetsk axis. His mother, sister and two minor brothers were waiting for him at home in Irpin.

"Before the great war, we were in the trenches and for seven months we had never fired from Grad. And on February 24, I was standing at my post as we were guarding an ammunition depot when my comrade ran up and said: ‘Get ready, the vehicle crews are setting off now’.

I realized that we had to stand, sink our teeth into that ground and hold on, because Kyiv is behind us, our relatives are behind us," Heorhiy recalls.

The first real clashes with the occupiers were difficult and fierce. The enemy was becoming more and more prepared.

"At first, we even laughed at their artillerymen. But a little time passed, and they started shooting a lot. Once, they shelled our positions in the Serebryanskyi Forest for three days in a row. If we had allowed ourselves to do that, we would probably have run out of long-term ammunition stock very quickly," he says.

He managed to survive in such hell thanks to his military skills and personal resilience.

"You bury yourself in a dugout and start praying. At first, you are a little afraid. Just a little... when a 120-mm mortar hits, it gets on your nerves. At the same time, you need to watch the enemy a little bit because they like to shoot from artillery, and at the same time approach with a group with a box of grenades and throw them at our positions," the defender explained.

"I took a grenade and prepared to blow myself up"

In May last year, Heorhiy was seriously wounded at a position near Bakhmut.

"There was an assault. I ran toward the machine gun and started operating it. I was running out of ammunition, so I rushed to the dugout for more. At that moment, a mortar shell hit. And that was it.

It was good that I still had my assault rifle on me. If I hadn't, I would have been dead by now: the assault rifle was hanging on the side, and a lot of the shrapnel that hit my body hit the weapon," he recalls.

Dozens of fragments cut his right arm. Under the rubble in the dugout, the defender began to lose blood. But his fellow soldiers did not lose their cool: they dug Heorhiy out and gave him first aid. When they were pulling him out, a tank attack began.

"When a tank hits, it's the worst thing: first it hits you, and then you hear a shell come out of the tank. And you don't understand what is happening at all. It hits you all the time, and there's nothing you can do: it's 3-5 kilometers away and breaks your positions, and you can only scratch its armor with your infantry weapons," Raskaley explains.

He realized that his injury was serious, so he took a grenade and told his comrades to leave him alone, but his friends refused to listen.

"I'm going to stick a needle in someone's eye, and you'll run away quickly"

As a result of the mortar shell explosion, Heorhiy suffered three strokes and four contusions. He was taken to Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro. There, he suffered clinical death and a coma. To stabilize his condition and save his life, doctors decided to amputate his arm.

The soldier regained consciousness in a hospital in Kyiv. At first, he did not believe it was over.

"I did not remember how I was taken out. The last thing I remembered was the battle: I was standing near a machine gun, firing it... and that was it. I opened my eyes, and my first thought was: did I fall asleep during the battle?

Then I began to analyze the situation: I had no machine gun, no guys around, I was lying somewhere, the place was unfamiliar, something was wrong with my right arm (I could feel it, but I couldn't move it), and my left arm was tied to the bed. And the nurses in the ward are sitting and speaking Russian. I immediately thought: I am a captive!" says Heorhiy.

Then he started to get out of the "captivity".

"I untied my arm unnoticed, took out the drips from my veins, chewed off one needle with my teeth so that I could have at least some weapons. I got out of bed, took two steps, and fell.

The doctor came running, started putting the drips back in, and asked me what military unit I was in. I only now realize that he was checking how much my brain functions had recovered, and then I told him that it would be better to shoot me right away," Heorhiy says.

He did not believe he was safe, even when his mother came to the ward.

"I told my mom that the plan of action was as follows: ‘I'm going to stick this needle in someone's eye, and while there’s a fuss, you're going to run away quickly. Go westward, you will come out to our people," Heorhiy recalls.

But his mother and the doctors, who began to speak Ukrainian, convinced the soldier that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Mother made an exception

Although the immediate threat was over, the war for the defender's health was just beginning. Heorhiy admits that it was extremely difficult to comprehend the new reality of living without an arm.

"I hated being on the second floor of the hospital: if I had been on the seventh floor, I could have gone out the window. My whole life was sharpened for two hands: I played the piano and guitar, worked as a massage therapist, even went fencing," he explains.

But the support of his mother, who was at her son's hospital bedside every day, gave Heorhiy back his will to live.

"She is a psychologist, and psychologists have a rule not to work with relatives. But she made an exception and started working with me, because there was no other way out," the soldier says.

Every day they did neurological exercises together, learned poetry and did everything to help Heorhiy's brain recover from three hemorrhages.

"At first, I learned to just sit. I would sit for 20 seconds and then lose consciousness. Doctors said I could lose my eyesight, and to prevent this from happening, I had to develop my brain. But my mother didn't tell me that, she just motivated me to do these exercises," says Heorhiy.

After a month of such rehabilitation, he began to walk a little. And eventually even to run. He was being prepared for bionic prosthetics, when fate decided to test Heorhiy's resilience once again.

"To install bionics, electrical signals from the brain must be transmitted to the muscles. I had the signals, but they were not being sent. The doctor and I measured the signals: one out of ten. That's it, game over," the defender recalls.

The soldier began to train his weakened muscles, although doctors did not give any guarantees that the bionic prosthesis would take root at all. But two weeks passed, and Heorhiy's performance, as he says, "went into space".

For about a month now, he has been learning to use the bionic arm.

"I can't say I've gotten used to it, but at least I don't feel it like a foreign body," the defender says.

He even returned to his hobby – ballroom dancing, which he used to do in civilian life.

"I will not return to the army, because I will be more of a hindrance than a benefit there. I have had three strokes. One more hit nearby, and I will have a fourth. So I plan to work in a rehabilitation center in Kyiv to help wounded guys," says Heorhiy.

Ukrainians with disabilities can receive free assistance from the EnableMe Ukraine organization.

Author: Artur Hor