A daughter’s letter to her father – a Ukrainian hero

August 24th is Ukrainian Independence Day. It has greater meaning than ever this year as the Ukrainian nation fights back the Russian invader in order to preserve its independence.

Dr. Oksana Maslyanchuk has lived in Northern California for almost a decade. This year, when the war broke out, she agonized about her aged parents back in Ukraine. Her father was suffering from cancer and she worried about how he would get treatment in the war-torn country. But as a refugee among millions in temporary housing in Eastern Europe, survival might be equally difficult for him and her mother. Fortunately, the Maslyanchuks were some of the last Ukrainians to be admitted across the U.S.-Mexican border with humanitarian parole, just before that border was closed in April.

I want to share with you a tribute that Oksana wrote to her dad – a true Ukrainian hero. In April 1986, seven days after the Chernobyl explosion, Anatoly Maslyanchuk, also a medical doctor, volunteered to go to the nuclear site to treat plant workers and local residents suffering from the effects of enormous release of radiation after the explosion. All of the others on his team have died off. Dr. Masylanchuk now fights his battle with cancer here, as a refugee of war in his homeland. Here’s his story:

A forgotten hero of Chernobyl, by Oksana Maslyanchuk

In 1986 I was a 7 year old girl living in the small town of Vynohradiv in southwestern Ukraine. I was the only child of my parents Maria and Anatoly Maslyanchuk. My mom worked as a teacher in the local high school while my father was a doctor at the town’s hospital. Both of my parents had chosen careers of service to their community and they took their obligations seriously. My father worked in the admissions section of the hospital and was often the first doctor arriving patients would see. It was a very stressful job and involved long hours away from home. He would often stay by the bedside of his patients long after his night shift had ended. Unlike in the USA, Ukrainian doctors have very low salaries and are expected to receive money directly from their patients. For this reason, many doctors choose to only to see wealthy patients who can pay for services. But my father would attend to everyone, rich or poor, and provide the same level of care. His example had a great influence on my life.

On the day of April 26th, 1986, the sky was clear with no indication of the catastrophe that had occurred in the early morning hours about 300 miles north in Chernobyl. During a routine test, the nuclear reactor had exploded and released a huge amount of radiation. My father came home from work and said that the hospital had formed teams of doctors to travel to Chernobyl and that he had volunteered. Being a doctor, he was fully away of the dangers the radiation posed. He told my mother and me that it was his calling and he had an obligation to help anyway he could.

His team arrived in the Chernobyl zone 7 days after the explosion and began treating victims. The Soviet government hid the danger the explosion posed to the residents. The news media did not talk about the extreme level of radiation or its effects on humans. No one from the team was given any protective gear because the Soviets did not want to alarm the people or reveal the severity of the nuclear release to the world. But once the radiation cloud drifted over Sweden, the seriousness of the incident could no longer be suppressed.

My father has no idea how much radiation he was exposed to as the doctors were not given equipment to monitor radiation levels. It's estimated that the levels of radiation in the evacuation zone were hundreds of times above acceptable levels.

My father returned to his home and family, but his life would never be the same. The horror of what he saw continued to haunt him. For the rest of his life, he’s suffered from nightmares. The physical effects of the radiation began with a diagnosis of heart irregularities and hypertension. He had a tumor removed from his left breast and later his right. A lobe of this right lung had to be removed when additional tumors were found there.

35 years have passed since the Chernobyl disaster and my father, at 72 years old, is the sole surviving member of the team of ten doctors that left on their mission of mercy.

My father’s dedication to medicine inspired me to become a doctor as well. My parents are my heroes and the two people I admire most in the world.