Thread by @thetimes

NHS consultant Michael Griksaitis specialises in moving sick children — but flying refugees with cancer presented a new challenge.

He tells @HelenRumbelow of the children’s bravery and resilience after being transferred from bunker to hospital thetimes.co.uk/article/how-we…

Griksaitis was in the air between Ukraine and England sometime in the middle of Sunday afternoon, leading one of the most stressful operations of his career, when “this realisation dawned on me,” he said

He was responsible for the safe evacuation of 21 desperately ill 🇺🇦 children to the NHS, and in the middle of this normal passenger aircraft, he worried about them needing emergency resuscitation.

But even as physically ill as they were, they had a worse health emergency: fear

Griksaitis 🗣 “I had been so paranoid about making sure we had the right medical equipment, the right drugs, the right machines to look after those children physically

🗣 “I hadn’t given enough time to reflect these are families that had been not only dealing with a child with cancer, but then dealing with a child with cancer in a war zone, being dragged through a war zone to cross a border, leaving behind their life and leaving their dads”

To go from a Ukrainian hospital where child cancer patients were being lugged into underground bunkers as many as three times a day, to a flight with air stewards offering orange juice with a napkin, was too much for the human brain to process

These children and their mothers were shell-shocked, but still kept going, and getting on this plane was one of their last leaps of hope:

🗣 “They were all very brave. It was humbling to see”

When the plane landed at an airport near Medyka, on the Ukrainian 🇺🇦 border, a bus full of the children, ranging from babies to teenagers, and their families pulled up.

🗣 “We were fortunate that the majority of children were able to sit up, although they were very, very sick”

It took hours to get the children carefully on the plane, plus their siblings and mothers, and the mood was grim. Griksaitis was nervous. What was he most worried about?

“I was most worried that the kids were sicker than we had planned equipment for,” he said

Griksaitis heard from an oncologist in Ukraine who said the ill children were being constantly moved in and out of shelters in a way that made recovery untenable

“A child with cancer is the worst time of a family’s life here in the UK, I didn’t think that it got much worse”

🗣 “He [the oncologist] said these children are fighting their own war with cancer, and now they’ve been put in a war. His words were distressing, reflecting the fact that without getting these children out they would die, it was the end of the line,” Griksaitis said

When the plane touched down, the whole Ukrainian group erupted with applause and high fives. “It was almost like they’d gone, ‘We’ve arrived,’ ” Griksaitis said.

The patients were dispersed to seven children’s hospitals

“They knew that their journey is only just beginning, their life is in upheaval in ways we can’t begin to understand,” Griksaitis said.

Read the full story 👇 thetimes.co.uk/article/how-we…