Petro, brother of Ihor Zinych, who died ten years ago at Donetsk Airport, is now living with his third heart. In early January, he underwent his second donor organ transplant

"I know that the first donor whose heart I received was a 34-year-old man, and now it’s a 22-year-old girl," says Petro.

He became the first patient in Ukraine to undergo a second heart transplant. His own heart began to fail after the death of his brother, Ihor Zinych, and the long search for his body in the country’s morgues—a task Petro undertook himself. His heart simply couldn’t bear it… The donor's heart kept him alive for almost nine years before rejection set in. The doctors who performed Petro’s retransplantation—a second heart transplant—hope that this heart will beat in the chest of the Hero of Ukraine’s brother for much longer.

Neither Petro nor his mother speaks much about the fact that they are the family of the Hero of Ukraine Ihor Zinych, who was killed in 2015. They do not seek special treatment or additional attention. But when people find out and express their gratitude and respect, it is clear that it means a lot to them. And when I asked Ihor’s mother and his younger brother if they felt his presence, Vira Ivanivna answered simply: "Ihor has been saving his brother all these years—through the hands of friends who guide us to the right doctors, through the hands of cardiac surgeons… It’s all him." The most striking part of this family’s story is that years ago, Ihor was the one diagnosed with a heart condition, while Petro’s heart was completely healthy…

"IHOR DECIDED TO GO TO WAR AFTER THE GUYS WHO RETURNED FROM THERE TOLD HIM: 'IF THERE WERE MORE MEDICAL WORKERS, MORE WOUNDED SOLDIERS COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED

Vira Ivanivna has three sons: the eldest, Andrii, then Ihor, and the youngest, Petro. There was a five-year age gap between the younger brothers. On January 20, it marked ten years since Ihor was killed at Donetsk Airport… He was a paramedic in the 80th Air Assault Brigade.

"My older sister’s husband was the only medical worker in our family," says their mother, Vira Ivanivna. "That’s why Ihor decided to apply to medical college after finishing school. And when his father—who worked as a high-rise construction worker—fell from a great height, suffered severe injuries, and endured a long recovery, Ihor became certain of his calling. To be honest, I didn’t want him to become a medical worker. He was passionate about computers and mathematics. I thought that was a better path for him. But my son was adamant: ‘I’m going to be a medical worker, and that’s final.’ He graduated from Bila Tserkva Medical College. In his final year, he took night shifts as an emergency medical technician, and after graduation, he began working at a hospital in Bila Tserkva, in the hemodialysis department."

- How did Ihor get into the army?

- It was conscript service. There were constant talks about him being taken away. He was so tired of it that he went to the military commissariat himself. This was before 2014. To be honest, we didn't think he would be taken, because he had a congenital heart defect - mitral valve prolapse. Ihor was trained in Chernihiv boot camp and then served in Kyiv, not far from the Lisova metro station.

- "I also served my mandatory military service - I was curious to see what the army was like," Petro adds, "I was in the last draft to Sevastopol. I was discharged, and two months later, the 'little green men' appeared."

- "I have five brothers," Vira Ivanivna continues. - "And they all served in the army. Back then, military service was prestigious. I was not afraid when my sons joined the army. There was no war, everything was peaceful."

"After his service, my brother didn’t want to commute to the hospital in Bila Tserkva, so he got a job in our town, Rokytne, as an ambulance attendant," Petro continues. "It was just when the reforms had started. The ambulance service was being reorganized. Only one ambulance remained for the entire Rokytne. At the same time, a physician's assistant was needed in the psychiatric office, so Ihor took the job. That’s where his call sign came from—'Psycho.' It stuck to him. The doctor would send him on calls to handle particularly 'pleasant' patients. The police were afraid to enter the yards where these patients lived. But Ihor would just jump over the fence. There were times when dogs tore his trousers… but nothing could stop him.

"Then our psychiatrist retired, and Ihor was the only one in the office," mother continues. "He treated patients together with a neurologist. And in 2014, when everything started to unfold..."

"My brother also had a hobby—he was into photography and DJing at a nightclub," Petro says. "Then, the guys from the first wave of mobilization started returning and sharing what they had witnessed in combat. They said, 'If there had been more medics, more wounded could have been saved.' That’s when he decided to go to war. He told us right away that he was going to the front and wouldn’t hide."

"In August 2014, he told me," his mother recalls. "Of course, we weren’t very happy about it... Father is a group I disabled person. My health isn’t great either. Petia (hypocoristic of 'Petro' is 'Petia' - ed. note) was still too inexperienced to take care of us. I was afraid of the war. I went to school in the Soviet Union, I read a lot about the war and watched a lot of films. My aunt, my mother’s sister, lost her husband in 1941, and he died a week later. They hadn’t gone far beyond the village when they were shot because they were unarmed, without anything. War is war... Now they say there are weapons. But back then, ten years ago, what was our army like? Didn’t I understand that? We started shouting that we didn’t want him to go, but he said, 'I’ll go.'"

"He was already in boot camp at the Novoiavoriv training ground, so we bought and sent him knee pads, gloves, elbow pads, uniforms, and body armor," Petro adds.

"Was he immediately assigned to the 80th Airborne Brigade?"

"Yes. As a combat medic. They were trained by NATO paramedics at the training ground. They taught them how to act in combat conditions: explosive packages were detonated during training to make it as close to actual combat as possible."

- He told me later: "I was crawling to the wounded man, and then there was an explosion. I jumped up and was 'killed'," says mother. - "That's how they were taught. Before the unit left for Donetsk, Ihor came home and stayed for two days.

- Have you heard about the events at the airport? Have you been following the news from there?

- Everything was loud, everyone knew that a lot of soldiers were dying there," Vira Ivanivna says. "But my son said he was going to Pisky, not to the airport. On the phone, he told me that he had set up an outpatient clinic in a school in Pisky. And three days later, he asked to go on a rotation there. Only volunteer soldiers went there, only those who volunteered. It was only before the New Year that we found out he was there."

- How did it happen? Did he tell you himself?

- It just happened... We used to talk at night. He mostly called at night. I heard him on the phone: there was an explosion again and again. I said, "I don’t get it – what’s going on in Pisky? What’s that noise?" And he said, "Mum, I’m at the airport." – "What do you mean, at the airport?" – "Just like that." Then he started complaining that there was no rotation – he had been there for a month, and no one had replaced him.

- I think they entered the airport on the 13th or 15th of December, - the brother adds. – The guys rotated every seven to ten days, but he stayed until the very end…

- Did your son say what kind of help he provided? Did he have many wounded?

- When Ihor Rymar was wounded, he called and said, "Mum, call everyone, tell them to pray. We have a seriously wounded guy, and we can’t evacuate him because of constant shelling." We’re a religious family, Baptists. He’s been going to church since childhood. And you know, everyone who came back from the airport, those who survived, said that there were no non-believers there.

Ihor was talking about the wounded guy, and I thought it was him. It shook me: "Who’s been wounded?" "Mum, not me. Ihor Rymar is in a critical condition. We’re asking for a corridor, but they won’t give it to us." They carried him out on their hands, as the guys told me.

- An ambulance arrived from the runway—an MTLB, - Petro adds. - And they carried him across the whole runway to the airport, taking turns with the stretcher.

There were many wounded, and they weren’t taken away right away, - mother continues. - They couldn’t get through to them—people said it was so intense there that it was difficult to break through. Later, after the first explosion, he didn’t tell us that he had been wounded in the head.

"THE LAST TIME I SPOKE TO MY SON WAS ON THE NIGHT OF 19-20 JANUARY"

- The explosions at the airport were on January 19 and 20, - his brother says. - The guys told us that when the first explosion happened on the 19th, all the walls were blown down, many had blast injuries and the place was left in ruins. They started building barricades out of whatever they could—bricks, ammo boxes—just to have something to take cover behind. The terminal had a basement—a parking lot underground. The enemy had access from that side. They planted explosives from below. The first explosion was 700 kilograms of TNT, the second was 1,500.

- When that explosion happened, there were many wounded, a lot of them. We learned all of this from the guys who were taken to hospitals. We traveled, looking for Ihor... We spoke to his comrades. They told us that Ihor had also been wounded, but he bandaged himself up. And even when they were trying to evacuate him, he resisted because there was still no replacement for the medical workers.

- Seems like a medical worker arrived on the 17th, but Ihor said: "He got out of the APC, sat down, covered his ears... What was he going to do here? I sent him back..." - the brother recalls.

- And that’s how he stayed, - the mother continues. - Then there was a second explosion – and... But I talked to Ihor the night of January 19th to 20th. I didn't know he had been wounded.

- "I already knew," Petro corrects. - "In the evening, it came up on some news. Yatsyna Zhenia called on the air and told to contact everyone I could, to contact everyone, to get our soldiers out of there. "Our doctor is wounded," he said. Ihor called that night.

- "I said to him: 'There is a doctor there, why didn't you leave? Why didn't you evacuate if there was a doctor?'" - mother continues. - "He was silent for a while, and then he said: 'That doctor is me.' So, they called him Doc there. Later, Sokolovskyi said that Ihor had removed a bullet from his back. He pulled it out, patched up the wound, and moved forward. He motivated the guys and encouraged them as best he could."

- Do you still keep in touch with those he helped at the Donetsk Airport?"

- In the first years, we kept in touch a lot. But now... most of the guys are gone: some have left, some are still fighting, and some have died...

- For the past two years, we’ve stayed in touch with Petia," mother says. "We’ve been carrying around him. We visited so many hospitals before his transplant.

- On the first anniversary of Ihor's death, I had heart issues for the first time," Petro adds. "In 2015, I fell ill six months after my brother's funeral. I was a cook, working in Kyiv. When Ihor went to war, I quit my job and returned home, where I got a job at a gas station. I think, and the doctors confirm, that the fuel fumes and their toxicity damaged my heart. I finished it off when we were searching for Ihor's body...

We travelled all over Ukraine, and in Dnipro, I turned over the bodies of the dead in the morgue several times... On 19 February, we buried my brother, and by spring, I had a persistent cough, cough, cough. How do they treat coughs in village hospitals? So, I kept working at the petrol station. They treated my cough to the point where an old doctor came, looked at the X-ray, and said: "Can't you see that, in addition to the cough, your heart is twice the size of your lungs? This isn’t just a cough!" They sent me to Bila Tserkva. There, a very good cardiologist, Kolomiets, said that more advanced technology was needed, that the district hospital wouldn’t help, and that I had to go to Kyiv. He meant that I needed to be examined with better equipment, that they couldn’t manage with their methods. It was at the Amosov Institute that I was first told that only a transplant could save me.

- How did you take it?" I ask mother.

- I was scared. I really didn’t want that surgery, I thought we could help Petia without surgery, just with medication.

- But I was diagnosed with dilated cardiomyopathy. My heart was expanding, and very rapidly. There are people who live with it for 10-15-20 years... Their condition progresses slowly. But in four or five months, my heart grew to the size of a litre. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t eat, and my organs started functioning differently.

- How much did you believe that you would get a heart transplant?

- The surgeon and my doctor campaigned for me that it was normal, that it was possible. Volodymyr Tanskyi - he now works in Kovel.

- "They persuaded me for a long time," says mother. "In the end, I agreed because there was no other way out.

- I had the operation on 16 February 2016, almost nine years ago. I recovered faster then than now because I was younger and lighter by a good ten kilograms.

In the photo: Petro on the surgery table in a Belarusian clinic

- Do you know from whom the first heart was transplanted?

- Only that he was a 34-year-old man. A sportsman. That's all we were told.

- How long did you stay in Belarus?

- A month. Before that, we spent three months at the Amosov Institute. We submitted documents for the allocation of funds to Belarus - the Ministry of Health transferred them. "The funds have been received, you can come, we will examine you," we received a message.

- Was it in the hospital after the transplant that you decided you were going to study medicine?

- I was told that I was not allowed to work as a chef, I was not allowed to work in hot shops. I wasn't going to go to the petrol station myself, it was only temporary. Six months after the transplant, I entered college, where my brother also studied. And then I got a job in the same department where Ihor used to work.

"MY FIRST HEART WAS TRANSPLANTED ALMOST NINE YEARS AGO"

- "I was waiting for a new heart for a month here at the Heart Institute," Petro continues. "And there was already a donor suitable for me. But with a second transplant, even greater matches in the tests are required, so the typing was done very carefully. They collected 90 or 100 millilitres of blood for various tests. All my data was entered into the database. When they checked the heart just as carefully, it didn’t fit.

- Were you very upset?

- Why would I be? I knew there would be another one (he smiles). And overall, I don’t like getting upset.

- When problems with the transplanted heart started, how did you feel it?

- It happened unexpectedly. I was told that my new heart should last about 14 years, that’s how strong it was. But… I must admit, bad habits took their toll. I allowed myself to have a beer and smoke a cigarette. But that wasn’t recommended. And about two years ago, I was diagnosed with angina pectoris. When I had my first attack, I was sitting on the balcony with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, then I went into the room – and fell down… I didn’t know that it was the first time I’d fainted. My friends were visiting at the time. They poured water on me and called an ambulance. But I was a hero: why would I need an ambulance? I needed to go to the maternity ward – my wife was about to give birth to our younger son. I sat down in the kitchen to put on my shoes, and the dizziness hit again. I stood up, tripped over the table, fell down, and lost consciousness again… and broke my leg. It turned out that I had almost had a heart attack. Some of the vessels leading to the heart had closed. They were opened with stents. Over time, it became clear that these methods were only temporary. At first, I was diagnosed with angina pectoris. Every six months, I would come in for a coronary angiography. All those stents they put in became overgrown, and the vessels were closing again. And then they started talking about a transplant again. But by then, a full-scale war had started – you couldn’t go to Belarus."

- Did you know that heart transplants were already being actively performed in Ukraine?

- I’ve known for a long time that they perform transplants here. So when I ended up at the Heart Institute, I understood that it would all happen right here.

The first time a donor suitable for me appeared, they told me in the evening that the surgery might take place the next afternoon. But then, at half past eleven in the evening, they told me to get ready – to wash, bathe, and shave. I figured they would still be running some tests, so I thought I had about 12-15 hours left. But at half past seven in the morning, a gurney rolled into my room, and they said: "Lie down, it's time to go."

- And we were on our way!" says Vira Ivanivna. "If we had known it would happen so quickly, we would have come overnight. We didn’t get to see each other before the surgery. Petia called: 'They're taking me, the gurney is already here.' And my son's wife and I were in the minibus...

- Do you also know who the donor is this time?

- A girl, 22 years old.

- Vira Ivanivna, why do you say that this time the operation was more difficult?

- "It was harder in terms of physical recovery," says mother. - "He stayed in intensive care for a longer time, He didn't get up as quickly and started walking. Recovery is a little harder.

- Does it feel like your heart is working better?

- "I have a bag in my bedside table with a huge box of 'sweets'," Petro explains. "I don’t take any out of it anymore. I used to have to swallow a handful of pills three times a day. I had inhalers in all my jackets and trousers so that if I had an attack, I could help myself."

- "In Belarus, they probably put you in a wheelchair, next day?" the mother asks her son.

-"On the third day, I started trying to walk, and by the fourth, I was already walking around the ward. And now, on the sixth day, they put me in a wheelchair, on the seventh, they got me back on my feet, and only on the eighth did I start walking on my own. But that’s not what matters. The main thing is that I’m recovering. You have to take into account that my body has aged ten years."

- "Tell me, all these years, has Ihor ever made his presence felt? Do you get signs from him, does he guide you in any way? Or is he always present in your life?"

- "I'm sitting next to you because of Ihor," Petro replies.

- "Only thanks to Ihor!" adds the mother. "When we first did not know what to do or where to go, volunteer Olia Bashay, known by her call sign Kroha (moppet) in the war, helped us first with consultations in Kyiv and then with documents for Belarus. And this time, it was she who told us that we should go to the Heart Institute.

- "When his previous heart started to fail, we tried to save it by placing five stents in the coronary arteries, but that only helped for a short time," explains Borys Todurov, director of the Kyiv Heart Institute, who performed the transplant on Petro Zinych. "It became clear that a second heart transplant was needed. The donor was a woman whose relatives agreed to donate her organ after she suffered a stroke. And it happened in the very same Bila Tserkva hospital where our patient works... I'll be honest, I was nervous before this surgery, despite the fact that our team has performed more than 120 transplants since 2022 and we haven’t lost a single patient out of the last thirty! However, performing a second transplant is extremely difficult. And this was the first time we had ever done it. Since Petro had already undergone such a procedure, all his blood vessels were encased in dense adhesions, which significantly complicated the surgery. For about 20 minutes, his chest cavity was empty—during that time, we were preparing the donor heart and working on his vessels to ensure the organ could be securely implanted. And when we stitched in the donor heart, it started beating on its own, without the need for any additional stimulation. It was a small miracle. Petro is now living with his third heart!"

"I plan to return to work in about six months," Petro says.

- I'm more optimistic," adds Borys Todurov, "I think we can return to active life in six weeks. Otherwise, why did we do all this?

In the photo: Heart Institute doctors who took part in his rescue with Petro and his family

- I know that in our country, in order to retrieve organs for transplantation, the relatives of a deceased patient must give their consent," Petro continues. "In many countries, a different approach is used, and I support adopting it here as well. It's called presumed consent. If a person hasn’t left a written refusal to become a donor, it is assumed that their organs can be transplanted after death. There is no need to ask for permission from grieving relatives who are already devastated by their loss. I am ready to advocate for this because I have undergone multiple heart transplants myself and I see how many people are desperately waiting for transplants—not just hearts, but also livers, kidneys...

We spoke with Vira Ivanivna and Petro at the Heart Institute on the eve of January 20—the tenth anniversary of Ihor’s death. Although many of my questions were about the surgery and his recovery, his mother and brother kept returning to Ihor in their thoughts and reflections. And that is completely understandable. This wound will never heal.

-  "We don’t talk much about the fact that Ihor is a Hero of Ukraine," his mother says. "People might respond with, ‘Did we send him to war?’ We never brought it up here, but they still found out—first the head of the department, Havrylo Kovtun, and then the rest of the staff. From the very start, we felt the respect they had for Ihor. That means a lot to us. A month ago, I ran into someone in my village who looked me in the eye and said, ‘Who is your Ihor, and who do you think you are?’ You know, that hurt. Did our boys die for nothing? We live in peace, we live—excuse me—in comfort, because we receive pensions, salaries, we have electricity, food. During World War II, people suffered much more. And yet, we live in comfort. But those who despise our soldiers don’t understand that."

- "In our district, whenever a fallen soldier is brought home, I take my wife and we join the convoy," Petro adds. "You really notice it when you drive down a three-kilometer-long street and only fifteen people come out to pay their respects to a Hero..."

Violetta Kirtoka, Censor. NET