About Vasyly Rohovyy

My name is Vasyly Rohovy. I am from Austria.

Try to imagine a cold February evening… in a little Ukrainian town…. An eighteen-year-old guy goes along dimly lit street, fine dry snow is falling. His collie trails behind him. The guy is constantly stopping, waiting for his dog. He is lost in thoughts about his hated IT study at university, about his girlfriend (they had stupid quarrel again today) about many other problems so important, so intractable problems. In five minutes, he will be laying in a huge pool of his own blood and everything that was so significant a few minutes ago, will not mean anything anymore. His previous life will stop to exist forever.

That guy was me twenty-two years ago.

Going home, I saw a bag beside a car. That was a quite usual bag. I thought that someone had forgotten it. I stopped and picked it up. Over the next fifteen years, I would remember that moment over and over again! Why did I do that! My curiosity almost killed me. I tried to open it, but the bag did not yield, then I yanked harder. Unexpectedly it detonated in my hands, and something hot hit my face and chest. It got dark suddenly. I didn’t feel any pain.  I neither fall down nor lost my conscious. I was simply unable to realize in that moment what happened to me. I tried to rub my eyes and only then everything became clear to me –I had no hands, no eyes anymore. It happened nearby my parents’ home about seven-eight hundreds meter away. And I started running, running to my home looking for some help, but I took the wrong direction. God saved my parents from seeing me that evening. I run hitting trees, walls, cars and God knows what else, I fall down but then got up.  My strength quickly drained away and after the next fall, I could not get up anymore. I was laying on my back thinking that I was going to die, but “why?”

Because of the big blood loss, I felt very sleepy which meant death for me in that moment. But something in my head started screaming, “Don’t sleep! Do not do it! Stand up, call for help”. That was late evening, there was no one on the streets inspite of that I began to cry «Someone please help me!. Fortunately, a woman heard me and called ambulance. I was taking to the hospital. My life was saved there but I lost both hands. After four days of being at the hospital, doctors said to my parents that they could not do for me anything more. My poor parents had to treat me as well as they could at home. A week later, they rented a car and brought me to an eye clinic in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.

Before the explosion, I was like other guys of my age. I liked playing football on the weekends, reading historical books. I had parents and grandparents, sweetheart, a LOT OF FRIENDS …I was a very happy young man… I wish I understood it then. My recovery after the accident took months. I had to learn to help myself without hands. My stumps hurt badly; I could not do anything with them. I was helpless like a baby. That was a real torment to call for help after every visit of the bathroom. Fortunately, I could soon find very simply solutions of almost all normal daily activities. The years after the explosion were years of despair and pain. Of course, I understood that was a stroke not only for me but for my family too. Their son strong healthy guy suddenly became very disabled. And I was in state of despair. It seemed like I was not left with anything from my life prior to the explosion. I did not want to see anybody. I stayed at home by myself not knowing how to live without hands, with my burned face and a very poor eyesight. I think it is quite simple to understand my mental state.

My parents and sister wanted to support and help me to find a way out of the situation there i was in. How could they?  We are just a very ordinary family, even for Ukraine. This was a very huge challenge for them. They could find only one solution- to give me hope. They told me over and over again: do not give up! and you will get your hands and your eyesight back one day. It was more than hope -they made me to believe that a miracle was still possible, and we started looking for a clinic that could help me. Needless to say, nobody believed this was possible.

Neither I nor my parents knew anything about limb transplantation. We could only suppose that surgeries of such type were possible. There was a very few information about limb transplantation then. As my sister found an article about such surgery in France ( I have kept it till now) a months after the explosion, they were not sure at all should they tell me about it or not because they were afraid of giving me empty hopes. I am very grateful to them that they took the decision to show me that article. It gave me strength not to go mad and start to fight for my life. Sometimes it seems to me that if I hadn’t had that hope I wouldn’t have survived those days. But it took five years of search before we got a positive reply from the University Clinic of Innsbruck, Austria. As I heard about it I started jumping so high for happiness that hurt my legs!