On the first night that Russian forces invaded Ukraine, Laura Bukavina, MD, and her Ukrainian husband decided they had to do something to help their homeland. It was personal.
"Being Ukrainian, having family in Ukraine, as well as being the mother of three kids and seeing all those mothers struggle," said Bukavina, a urologic oncology fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
"You can't overthink it," she told Medscape Medical News. "I told my husband, 'Let's just go and see where they need our help most.' "
Bukavina's mother, who lives in the United States, was able to take the couple's three boys, ages 12, 6, and 2. Two days later, on February 26, Bukovina, 37, her husband Pavlo Karpyn, and her brother Antoniy Fulmes landed in Poland with no clear plan except to help as many people as possible.
Dr Laura Bukavina, her husband Pavlo Karpyn, and brother Antoniy Fulmes, with 6 bags of medical supplies ready to fly out.
They headed first to the city of Rzeszow in southeastern Poland, about 90 km (56 miles) from the Ukraine border, hoping a US NATO military base would steer them in the right direction. "We just knocked on the door and explained who we were and they said go to the border, so off we went."
After touring several of the eight border crossings between Ukraine and Poland they decided that Medyka, a Polish border town about 80 km west of the Ukrainian city of Lviv, was the most chaotic and in need of their help.
