So the good news is, the residents’ conditions all seem to have stabilized or improved since yesterday. Gennadiy is distributing the antibiotics the doctor prescribed 3 times per day – maybe that’s an important factor.
So the biggest challenge today was simply that we were short-staffed again today because Ludmila, the woman whose job is to serve the meals, is still unable to work. She tried to serve breakfast this morning, but was so dizzy that she nearly fell down a couple of times before she gave up and went back to bed.
Miraculously, Gennadiy was able to find a local woman, named Ailiona, who is willing to work part time. She started today, helping serve lunch and dinner. She is a nurse at the hospital in the nearest town and she works a 24 hour shift every 4 days, so she is available at least part-time three out of every four days. She is scheduled to work at the hospital tomorrow, but she promised to return the day after tomorrow and work at least part-time during the three days she’s not scheduled at the hospital. If she continues long-term, she could be a real asset to the nursing home, because it is chronically short-staffed and if that organizational problem isn’t fixed, I’m afraid Yevhenia will burn out (either emotionally or physically, or both). If that happens, I think it’s fair to say that people will die of neglect as a direct result.
Since Afdandil was taken into the hospital for emergency treatment for the blood poisoning in his foot, I’ve been repurposed to spoon feeding two blind old ladies, Grandmother Hanna and Grandmother Nina.
Grandmother Hanna is so cute – she weighs about 65 pounds (30kg) and she spends every minute between meals fast asleep. But three times a day, breakfast, lunch and dinner, she wakes up as hungry as a bear coming out of hibernation. I swear, she eats almost as much as I do, and with great enthusiasm. She also loves to hold hands and she’s very appreciative of the care she receives. It’s fun to help Grandmother Hanna.
Grandmother Nina, although not quite as thin as Grandmother Hanna, is actually more frail, and I’m afraid she’s becoming even more frail. As I’ve been describing over the last couple of days, she can’t sit up by herself anymore, and she’s really not very interested in eating. This morning she did eat a nice bowl of macaroni noodles and this evening she drank a half a cup of tea and had a few spoons of rice porridge. But she didn’t eat much of anything at lunch. Lately I’ve been spending all the mealtimes just with her. Someone else must be helping Grandma Hanna, but I don’t know who it is, because they are in separate rooms, since we moved Grandma Nina to the reclining bed.

If any readers are interested in spending a few weeks in a quiet village in western Ukraine nursing an elderly war evacuee, please feel free to reach out through the RAYA community page.