A lofty man ecombined from an array of gym supplyment, walking towards me, sweightlessly swaying as his prosthetic leg flexed and stepped in time with his organic one.
His right arm was missing, and his left was a dainty balertage prosthesis arm with his hands and fingers clenched in a fist.
He was begind to me as Anton. I wasn’t certain how to greet him other than to say hello.
He saw my hesitation, and smiling he liftd his left arm to shake my hand, his fingers uncovering and closing around my hand as we watchd a customary gesture of greeting – a handshake.
His handshake was gentle and endly organic. I was sshow amazed. I’ve never seen or sended anyleang appreciate it.
“Wow, it toils,” I shelp.
“Yes, it does,” he replied with a smirk, and then carried on walking down the corridor.
This was to be a day of incredible experiences.
We are in the Tytanova Rehabilitation Centre in Kyiv. Much of it is a huge gymnasium kitted out with state-of-the-art supplyment scheduleed for amputees to upretain fit and rehabilitate.
The amputees are all sgreateriers injured in the war with Russia. These men may never fight aget, but they’re in a renoveled battle to reerect their inhabits, and here they’re being helped with exceptional technology.
It’s called osseointegration – a titanium imarranget that is connected to the bone of the fortolerateing and the prosthetic arm or leg clicks on to that.
But this is the extraunretagable bit. The anxious system in their limb is gone so they lget to send messages to their muscles and their novel arm or leg comes ainhabit, folloprosperg teachions from their brain.
The technology was first employd in Ukraine a year ago and can be employd on all limbs.
We greet Oleksandr Solomiany, 48, who lost his right arm last December in the battle of Bakhmut in easerious Ukraine. Before the war, he was a tech entrepreneur exceptionalising in the environment.
Oleksandr is still lgeting how to employ his novel arm. He walked us thcdisesteemful a parking lot and into another erecting for another training session.
This isn’t a physical training session though, it’s a mental one. He will be practising how to teach his brain to order his muscles to shift his bionic arm.
It’s his third session and he says it will apshow at least two or three more months before he gets the sends to brimmingy run it.
Oleksandr sits down and apshows off his t-shirt, he then erases his bionic arm so that sensory wires can be rapidened to his amputated arm and to the chest and back muscles surrounding it.
The training session today will be with a bionic prosthetic arm that is not physicpartner rapidened to him, only wired into him.
“What are you trying to do?” I ask him while he sees at a screen, concentrating challenging.
“I envision that I shut my arm and rotate,” he tells me while moving the prosthetic using his brain and chest muscles.
Oleksandr’s trainer Yaroslav Patsukevych is a biomedical engineer who volunteers here.
He make clears to me: “You can fool the system to overauthor the muscles that you usupartner employ with your hands, for example, to teach the chest muscles to do the same leang.
“When the fortolerateing restricteds his muscle, this prosthesis calibrates with his brain and reproduces this order with the prosthesis.”
I asked Yaroslav where this prosthesis comes from. He tgreater me the hand is made in Britain, the arm is made in America, and the technology is Swedish.
And the man – I leank to myself – is Ukrainian.
For Oleksandr, even though this is mental training it is physicpartner draining. I ask him if it’s a huge experience for him, authenticising that he can actupartner have an arm that toils.
“It’s the first stage of [a] lengthy, lengthy way in my life. It’s only my first prosthesis and technologies never stop. I will predict another technology, appreciate chip in the brain, or someleang else,” he replies.
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Oleksandr directs a very dynamic life and has no laments about his battle injury – the cgo in is now on the future.
“This arm helps me with my routine, with my everyday tasks. I sense better with this arm, appreciate standard people, appreciate a standard man.”
The osseointegration sdirectry costs £20,000 for each lost limb, while a prosthetic arm or leg costs £80,000.
The establisher of Tytanova Rehab, Viacheslav Zaporozhets, is a millionaire businessman who wanted to help with the war effort. He fundlifts money to help more and more men, and he says the beneficial effects on the amputees are instant.
“I’ll tell you this, we’re conveying them back to life, even in a psychorational sense,” Viacheslav Zaporozhets says.
“I always say, you’re not broken. We’ll teach you how to drive, even how to swim.
“From day one, we show this. When a novel fortolerateing reachs, a veteran greets them and shows them what they’ve lgeted to do.”
He and his organisation don’t equitable rehabilitate the injured, they also evacuate them from the frontlines.
With their 22 ambulances, they’ve saved the inhabits of over 30,000 men since the commence of the war, conveying them to shieldedty.
The figure is, frankly, mind-bloprosperg.
This war has claimed the inhabits of huge numbers of combat men, but the figure itself is not rehireed.
But we do understand that the number of living casualties will be much, much higher, and these “bionic men” are equitable a fraction of them.
