Editorial
Love Thy Neighbor Deval (Reshma) Paranjpe, MD, MBA, FACS
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ost of us have been glued to the news recently, stunned and horrified by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The news is full of images of death and destruction, of fleeing refugees huddled under bridges and desperate to take the last trains out of the country. If you decolorize the images, they eerily resemble images of WWII that are seared into the minds of many adults. As Mark Twain famously pointed out, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. The people impacted by this conflict are just like people you know. In fact, they may be people you know. The young CFO of a Silicon Valley tech startup and her teenage children are among the victims of Russian mortar fire, memorialized in a photograph splashed across the internet. Physicians are finding themselves under fire as hospitals are bombed. Office workers and baristas, ballet dancers and beauty queens—an unlikely cross section of society has united in taking up arms to defend their homeland. Women and children and the elderly are struggling to escape, often without adequate food, medicine, clothing or shelter.
ACMS Bulletin / March 2022
Innocent children are being emotionally and physically traumatized by war in a way that dwarfs our peacetime first world problems of “the kids are behind a whole year because they had to learn online because of the pandemic” and “my kid missed his prom and graduation and the dorm experience freshman year of college.” How can kids learn when bombs are falling around them? How will the psyches and bodies of these Ukrainian children be scarred, and how will they ever recover? How do you explain their pain and fear to your own children? The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are War, Pestilence, Famine and Death. The first three clear the way for the last. So far, we have war and pestilence. War creates famine where it would not otherwise exist, and that will undoubtedly be next in the news cycle as refugees struggle to find assistance and those left behind in Ukraine suffer untold deprivations. Our beloved Pittsburgh icon Mr. Rogers told us as children that we should always “look for the helpers.” As adults, it is our job to be the helpers that children can look to for comfort. As physicians, it is our job to be the helpers that adults can look to for comfort.
What can one person far away do to help? You can educate yourself and study the history of the region and its conflicts with your family. You can be grateful that you are not in the same situation, for all that separates us from refugees of any stripe is luck—and an accident of birth counts as luck. You can open your heart to the Ukrainian people, while also opening your heart to the humanity of the Russian people---so many are aghast at what their leadership is doing and are protesting in the streets at great peril to themselves and their loved ones. You can hold your children close while you watch the news together and explain it to them. This may help you regain a sense of perspective regarding your own problems and will help your children develop a sense of perspective in life. “At least I have peace of mind that my neighborhood will not be shelled and I will not be shot. I have food, a roof over my head, clean clothes, medicine, freedom, and hope. There are people elsewhere just like me who do not, through no fault of their own.” And then it is a small but logical leap to realize that there are Continued on Page 6
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