You did it! Today we reached our original goal for this campaign titled Help Ukraine NOW! Thank you very much to all 53 of you who donated, and to the many more who’ve shared this fundraiser on line and word of mouth. This does NOT mean that we are finished raising funds for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters(link below), but we wanted to take a moment to acknowledge all of you kind contributors from around the world. Thank you very much, or as they would write here, дуже тобі дякую.
As this is currently being written on a train to Lviv, our Dr. Suzanne, with collaboration with @global.response, is busy in a local hospital teaching the wonders of the Butterfly ultrasound to the staff. Yesterday, she said that she could barely get a word in as all of the Ukrainian doctors were overly excited about the Butterfly and how this new technology would help them diagnose their wounded and sick.
Looking out the window of this crowded and hot train, the view is very similar to the Ukrainian flag, fields of yellow flowers with blue skies above. It’s hard to believe that not too far away is a full-on disgusting war. This train is carrying this writer to a meeting with a local manufacturer, who now has started making their own tourniquets. After a month of constant negotiations and improvements, these made in-country tourniquets are finally ready. It’s impossible to express to you what a massive difference this is going to be and such a game changer for the defense of Ukraine. These 200 tourniquets that we will buy tomorrow are in addition to the 300 we’ve already purchased, thanks to you.
The train is still moving slowly and seated directly in front is a smiley nun, who is making a rosary out of the two national colors. With the help of Google Translate, I tell her the rosary is beautiful. We write back and forth to each other, and I mention that I’m buying tourniquets for her fighting countrymen and women. She writes “this rosary is my tourniquet”.
Hours later, as we get off the train in Lviv, she writes “I will pray for you”, and gives this very humbled writer her newly finished tourniquet.
