in November 2017 he received a bullet wound to the head, to the left hemisphere of the brain. The boy was taken to the Dnieper from a hospital in frontline Bakhmut. He was in a coma for a week, doctors gave disappointing forecasts. But he survived. After the Dnieper there was a Lviv hospital, and then Dima underwent rehabilitation in the center in Klevan in Rivne region.

Now Dmytro travels four times a week for four hours from his native village of Sukholysy, near Bila Tserkva, to Irpen near Kyiv, makes four transfers on the way to the Next Step Ukraine rehabilitation center and has already shown the results of recovery in a year.
We met Dmitry last year. Then he came to me with rehabilitation specialists. He said that he had barely climbed to the fourth floor – after the injury, the boy’s right side was almost motionless.

Then Dima just laughed out loud. And until he explained that he spoke badly, I would not have guessed that he had suffered such an injury.

Now the guy feels his arm and leg much more confidently, and with his left hand he presses so goodbye or at a meeting that he catches his breath. Dima also laughs out loud, jokes and pronounces words much better.

I present this text in the form of a dialogue, because Dmytro tries very hard to speak, and it now comes out in separate words, not whole sentences.

– Term – uh, brrr! Gum – uh… – says Dima.
– Are you so upset by the word “term” or by the word “Desna”? – Mykola Svyshch, a physical therapist and rehabilitation specialist, asks Dmytro.
– From “the term in Desna”, – prompt Dmitry, and he laughs.
– In 2012, in the fall served a term, – shows Dima on a calculator numbers.
– Why aren’t you trying to pronounce the numbers 2012? I ask him.
“It’s hard.” Numbers are cool (meaning everyone remembers), language is hard (meaning you can’t pronounce very well). Rehabilitation specialist Mykola and I start talking slowly so that Dima repeats after us: “Two-thousand-two-over-ten.” And he repeats.

Dmytro Triboy studied at the National Pedagogical University. M. Drahomanov to a psychologist-speech therapist, then there was a term of service. He joined the war in 2015 as a member of the Odessa 28th Brigade, 1.5 years later was transferred to the 95th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, was a scout.

He laughs that by education a psychologist-speech therapist, and now he deals with a speech therapist, learns to pronounce complex words and compose correct sentences.

On November 22, Dmytro Triboy celebrates his second birthday. This guy turned out to be stronger than the enemy bullet, than the war itself. And in the rehabilitation center Next Step Ukraine help to return to full life of the Ukrainian military with craniocerebral injuries, after strokes, with spinal cord injuries and any other disorders of the central and peripheral nervous system. You look at the guys who overcome the consequences of enemy shelling, bullets and wounds every day, as they, despite the pain, recover, and you realize that victory is not achieved immediately, they go to it in small but confident steps.