When the WhatsApp message comes in, Yuri and Dr. Lana Yanishevski start working. The couple are translating medical records for children with cancer living in Ukraine who need to be evacuated to other countries to continue their cancer treatment.
“It’s very important,” Lana Yanishevski, a pediatrician in private practice in Memphis, told TODAY. “Every chemotherapy protocol depends very much on the good diagnosis and the diagnosis already made. Doctors need to know what was done, which treatments they’re on and which arm of the treatment. So without the translation, it’s very difficult.”
Helping from afar
When Russia invaded Ukraine a little over a month ago, the Yanishevskis grappled with a lot of tough emotions. The couple —who had emigrated from Kyiv to the United States in 1991 — worried about loved ones still living in the country and felt like they wanted to do something to help their home country. Yuri Yanishevski reached out to a former high school classmate and offered to send money, but he couldn’t buy anything at the time.
“Later on when we spoke again he goes, ‘I started buying SIM cards for the local defense battalion and so I can use the money,’” Yuri Yanishevski, an engineer at ALSAC, the fundraising and awareness organization for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, recalled to TODAY. “He walked 70,000 steps in one day to go to various pharmacies to buy stuff for this battalion that he’s helping.”
While sending money to help his friend supporting Ukrainian troops felt good, they still wanted to do more. When one of Lana Yanishevski’s patient’s parents noted that people were needed to translate medical records for pediatric cancer patients, she knew they could make a difference with their skills.
“We were feeling very helpless with the Ukrainian war that affected us deeply,” Lana Yanishevski said. “It was definitely very meaningful to be able to help in that way and the connection was to St. Jude.”
More than 200 people around the world are helping to translate the files. When a medical record becomes available, the group receives a WhatsApp message. Whoever is free claims the file and they receive an email with the medical record. Lana Yanishevski puts the document through Google Translate and then carefully combs through everything to make sure it’s correct. She struggled at first with the medical abbreviation but then someone started a Google document with a glossary of Ukrainian medical abbreviations.
“When it comes to treating cancer, which is as bad as it gets, there is pretty much no room for error. So if the doctors who receive patients don’t clearly understand what was done what kind of drugs they were on, there is no room for that,” Yuri Yanishevski said. “They are already balancing on the edge of life and death.”
Sometimes the files are needed immediately.
“If it’s urgent that needs to be translated within an hour,” Lana Yanishevski said. “Urgent means (the children) are at the door to the hospital.”
More recently, files have been handwritten, likely from doctors rushing to help their patients be considered from evacuation sooner. Manually translating those notes took a lot of time — up to eight hours.
“It takes so long because you have to translate word by word,” Lana Yanishevski explained.
But Yuri Yanishevski found an optical character recognition software program that scans the handwritten notes and puts them into a digital document that Lana Yanishevski can better use.
“That does a pretty good job and so I take those photographic files and then do a conversion to a Word document,” Yuri Yanishevski said.
After they translate the files, Lana Yanishevski notifies the WhatsApp chain and then emails the translation to St. Jude.
“I started getting emails that the chart numbers such and such that you translated reached the hospital,” she said. “Wow, what an amazing feeling that actually what you did it helps the child.”
Arriving at hospitals
When they first started helping with the medical records, they thought the children would all be coming to St. Jude for care.
“As I was translating those records I’m thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, all those kids are coming.’ I was so excited,” Lana Yanishevski said. “It was reported to us that 36 patients just got out of Ukraine and I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, how will I feed borscht to 36 people?!’”
But she soon learned that most of the patients will go to European hospitals. A plane with Ukrainian pediatric cancer patients recently arrived in Memphis and Yuri Yanishevski joined a social worker to meet them and translate.
“Their faces lit up because they heard their native language in a foreign land,” Yuri Yanishevski said. “That was wonderful to see them … they came with their siblings.”
The couple feels grateful for the overwhelming public support of Ukraine.
“The more people will hear about Ukraine, maybe they’ll be inspired by our story,” Lana Yanishevski said. “I cannot tell you how many of my patients, strangers reached out to me after the story and just wanted to help.”
At times, the generosity feels overwhelming.
“The kindness is coming from everywhere,” Yuri Yanishevski said. “St. Jude they really went above and beyond to help those children survive and that’s just amazing.”
While Lana Yanishevski won’t be making borscht for the newly arrived Ukrainian families just yet, the cooks in the cafeteria are looking for a recipes to make them comforting food from home. Lana Yanishevski did have a suggestion where they could find a good borscht recipe.
“They need to take lesson from my mother.”