Retired paramedic at the age of 73 enrolled in SVO

“My mother was an operating room nurse, and I went to a medical school in Krasnoufimsk,” says Lyudmila Ivanovna. – During my studies, I fainted twice during operations.

Overcame myself. I graduated from college in 1969 and I was sent to the village of Natalinsk. I became the head of the emergency room. And this at the age of 19! And she led the reception, and went to the calls. Once they brought a grandfather, whose ear was torn off by a dog. She stitched up the wounds. She was both a surgeon and a midwife. Rural paramedics can do everything.

During that period, Lyudmila met her love.

– Here in Natalinsk, in the Krasnoufimsky district, it was customary to gather for the farewell to the army with the whole crowd. Followed by two guys. And at one in the morning, their brother Valentin, who studied at the Higher Military-Political Tank Artillery School, arrived by train from Sverdlovsk. They met his eyes, and it was like an electric shock. This is what happens when you meet your man. We saw each other later in the winter and summer holidays. And they wrote letters to each other all the time. Valya wrote me two or three letters a day. We got to know each other in letters. I was rural, very quiet, timid, embarrassed all the time. Thanks to the fact that I started working with people, I began to feel more confident.

And then the young played a wedding. Lyudmila left for Sverdlovsk and began working for an ambulance. Valentin was then still a cadet, he was a 4th year student.

– After graduating from college, my husband was assigned to Chita, in the Trans-Baikal Territory. I got a job in an ambulance, worked for a long time in the cardiology team. Our 14th brigade was the best at the station. They worked like they were at the forefront. There were urgent calls all the time. They were very friendly – one for all and all for one. One measured the pulse, the other was already looking for a vein, put a dropper, the third “pumped”. They worked as a single mechanism, quickly, harmoniously, selflessly. The team included an honored doctor of the RSFSR. So many lives saved…

They saved, according to Lyudmila Ivanovna, people after accidents, and with stab wounds, and with heart attacks.

“We were on call for three hours to relieve pulmonary edema. And then they dragged the sick from the upper floors on themselves. Where will they go in this state? I remember my grandmother from the village of Naklonny near Chita, who had a heart attack. The husband refused to wear it. They themselves looked for warm tights, a jacket, a skirt in the closet, collected her hospital. Everyone had to see, including human meanness.

Lyudmila Ivanovna remembers each of her patients, to whom she put a defibrillator, restored breathing, put “systems”. Once they rescued a three-year-old boy who was hit by a car. When the baby died, they roared along with his mother.

– I myself had a little daughter, when Valentine was in dress, I took Masha with me to work. So I was on duty with her together in the ambulance. Then, when my daughter was one year and eight months old, she placed her in a kindergarten.

Valentin Fedotov, by the nature of his service, often had to change garrisons.

“This is a special world. I remember that my husband studied in absentia at the academy, he left for two or three months at the session. And my neighbors, my husband’s comrades, took me and my son from the maternity hospital. Everything was brought, prepared, laid on the table. This is a real brotherhood, where in the first place is mutual assistance and mutual assistance.

Sretensk, Peschanka, Chita … State-owned apartments were replaced one by one. Each time it was necessary to re-equip the life.

– Valentin was the political officer of the regiment, then – the deputy head of the garrison. They went to exercises in the steppe. The frost was – minus 40. The responsibility was great, the husband turned gray early. How many guys died because of their stupidity. Somewhere they got vodka, got drunk. And they lived in the dugouts where the stoves stood, due to an oversight, a fire started, they suffocated in their sleep … Once, during the exercises, the tank commander decided to open the hatch on the move, leaned out, at that time the mechanic slowed down, and the following tank hit the guy on the head with a cannon. Vale had to inform his parents about his death. It was all a notch to the heart.

Lyudmila Ivanovna had to work as a paramedic in a kindergarten, as a nurse in a children’s hospital, at a medical center at a railway station in Chita. Of course, it turned out that the nickname Mom-Luda was assigned to her. She had enough for everyone.

– The station’s first-aid post is also a small ambulance. Passengers had to be resuscitated more than once. And one day a soldier came and asked for an antipyretic pill. It turned out that he had a fever for a week. I put him a thermometer, and he has 39.9. He was already demobilized, said that he had a train in forty minutes. He had to go to Yekaterinburg, three and a half days. I told him to get undressed. I started listening to him, and the guy had wheezing in one lung and in the other. The pressure is 60 to 40, I realized that he was already suffering from infectious-toxic shock, bilateral pneumonia.

I tell him: “I won’t let you go anywhere, give me your ticket.” He – in any, says that they are waiting for him at home, his parents will meet at the station. She insisted and called an ambulance from the hospital. Two and a half weeks later, he came to my first-aid post and thanked me. Then I was convinced once again how much human life depends on doctors. What a joy it is to see a person healthy.

Lyudmila Ivanovna, having retired, continued to work. Last year, her husband Valentin, a lieutenant colonel in tank troops, died of a stroke. She returned to her small homeland, to Krasnoufimsk.

– We lived with him for 50 years in perfect harmony. In recent years, he lived in the country, kept an apiary. When I came to see him, Valya says: “I have a holiday today, my Luda has arrived.” And he never stopped confessing his love to me.

Lyudmila Ivanovna’s daughter Maria became a doctor. My son Dmitry has two higher educations: pedagogical and legal. He is the captain of the reserve, in recent years he worked as the head of the oil terminal. Dmitry is 42 years old. Recently, he and three comrades went as a volunteer to the zone of the special military operation in Ukraine.

“I just couldn’t do it differently, I was brought up that way, I grew up in an environment where the word “honor” and “Motherland” are not an empty phrase,” says Lyudmila Ivanovna. – Transbaikalians, Urals, Siberians are a special people: unpretentious, conscientious, patriotic. Dmitry Nelli’s wife supports him in everything, she is the mayor of the city of Skovorodino, Amur Region.

Where is the son now – Lyudmila Ivanovna does not know. A week ago, his phone was taken away.

– From the very beginning of the special military operation, I did not find a place for myself. I felt uneasy in an empty apartment, although I was engaged in self-development, I read a lot. I am used to helping people, so I decided to go to one of the front-line hospitals to nurse the wounded soldiers. I have both strength and knowledge for this.

I went to our district military registration and enlistment office, they told me there that they were not recruiting doctors. The regional military commissariat also answered that it was not in their competence. They advised me to contact the Yekaterinburg City Duma hotline. Which is what I did. Recently, an assistant to the mayor called me and said that he would contact the hospital in Rostov-on-Don.

Television men came to Lyudmila Ivanovna. The woman admits that publicity confuses her, says that her impulse is something personal, she worries about her son and other guys who are in the war zone in Ukraine.

You will never give a woman 73 years. She is very mobile, energetic, active. Now she is drawing up a sanitary book, undergoing a medical examination, she has already passed all the tests, had a fluorography, and began to bypass specialists. She has all the vaccinations, and most importantly, she has a desire to help and has 50 years of paramedical experience behind her, of which 27 years are in the ambulance.

Read also: Hidden mechanisms found in Putin’s decree on martial law