Before surgery, a metal frame was attached to Harry Forestell’s head to keep it still during an MRI scan. During surgery, the frame was bolted to the surgical table. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
This First Person article is written by Harry Forestell, host of CBC News New Brunswick at Six, who draws upon his experiences with Parkinson\’s disease.
My latest party trick is a real attention grabber.
It\’s a vivid illustration of the before and after effects of my recent treatment for Parkinson\’s disease. Proof of just how much a little poking around in the brain can achieve.
The treatment is called deep brain stimulation (DBS). It involves implanting thin electrodes into the brain where they emit tiny electrical pulses. Those pulses, applied continuously to just the right section of grey matter, stimulate centres in the brain that control signals sent to your muscles. In the basal ganglia, the engine house of the brain, signals are sent to the body ordering everything from speaking, to swallowing, to walking and touching. When those signals don\’t get through, or when the instructions get scrambled, the body\’s reaction can be cruel. Hands tremble uncontrollably, legs shake, walking becomes increasingly difficult, even swallowing is a challenge.
These are all early symptoms of Parkinson\’s disease and the list is by no means exhaustive.
Parkinson\’s is considered a chronic but not fatal disease. As neurologists will often explain, you will die with Parkinson\’s, not from Parkinson\’s. While true, it doesn\’t really capture the creeping, insidious progress of the disease as it deprives victims of the ability to control their own bodies.
Medical stories like this have always been a source of fascination for me. I worked for several years as a medicine and science reporter, covering stories that included the panic over mad cow disease in the U.K. I produced radio features on brain development and decay.
Little did I know that I eventually would be reporting on my own brain malady.
A shock of a diagnosis, and a relief
The day my diagnosis of Parkinson\’s disease was officially confirmed came as much of a relief as a shock.
It was 2015 and for the previous two years, my wife Jenny and I had been careering back and forth between hope and despair. My Fredericton neurologist, Dr. Eva Pniak, a patient and persevering soul, suspected Parkinson\’s, but suggested the problems I experienced walking and with my tremoring hands could also be explained by a modestly more benign condition called essential tremor.
These are just some of the drugs used to control Parkinson\’s disease. While levodopa is initially the most effective medication, it produces side effects that require other drugs that produce their own side effects. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
She referred me to a specialist in Toronto where the diagnosis was conclusive.
At 53, I had Parkinson\’s.
From leaping out of a tree to dancing the tango, very little happens in the body without first being ordered by the basal ganglia. Those orders are sent at the speed of light through nerve networks with the help of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. It is the as-yet unexplained decline in the brain\’s dopamine-producing cells that leads to movement disorders like Parkinson\’s.
It\’s a simple equation: no dopamine, no movement.
With Parkinson\’s, those dopamine cells start quietly dying off years before symptoms first appear. Scientists aren\’t certain why this happens, or why the process cannot be stopped or slowed.
Doctors can replace some of the lost dopamine with a medication called levodopa, but it causes a side effect known as dyskinesia — sudden uncontrolled muscle movements in the arms and upper body that create a writhing, torquing motion. As doctors increase doses of levodopa to stave off Parkinson\’s tremors, dyskinesia increases.
The payoff is in quality of life for patients
Neurologists have been experimenting with DBS to treat Parkinson\’s and other movement disorders for nearly 40 years. In 1997, the U.S.-based Food and Drug Administration approved DBS to treat Parkinson\’s disease.
Why not more? The simple reason is that it is a treatment involving intricate brain surgery by highly specialized surgical teams and requiring considerable aftercare.
WATCH | How deep brain stimulation can help overcome debilitating effects of Parkinson\’s:
See the almost instantaneous effects of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease treatment
Harry Forestell shows how DBS therapy can work in daily life — and demonstrates what happens when he turns it off.
\”The surgical expertise is extremely important,\” he said.
\”You have to have a surgeon that knows how to do the procedure and knows how to put the electrodes in the right spot. But then after the surgery, you need an expertise in doing all of the programming and adjusting the stimulators and also adjusting the medication doses which typically change after the operation,\” he said.
\”So it\’s a very complicated procedure that requires a team and it\’s the neurologist and the nurses after the surgery that are doing a great deal of the work in optimizing the responses.\”
It is a procedure, Lang points out, that requires support from provincial governments. The payoff is a treatment that can offer major improvements in quality of life for Parkinson\’s patients.
\”The Ontario government has appreciated the importance,\” said Lang, adding he feels lucky to have a team of expert neurosurgeons, neurologists, nurses and others to support patients.
\”The government recognized the importance of this technique and have provided what\’s called volume-based funding to allow us to operate on a much larger number than most centres.\”
My own experience is a vivid illustration of the relief DBS can bring to some Parkinson\’s patients.
Holes in my head
I entered Toronto Western Hospital on Sept. 30, 2022 with an idea of what was going to happen, but no real appreciation of what it would feel or sound like.
A metal structure was bolted to Forestell\’s skull prior to surgery at Toronto Western Hospital in September. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
I knew at some point before the end of the day someone was going to drill a hole in my head. At least one hole. Maybe two.
I was forewarned by reliable parties that the sound of that drilling would be akin to an airplane taking off. More like Concorde taking off inside my head!
Before surgery I had a metal structure bolted to my skull, not unlike the square lightshade at the top of a lamppost.
This was meant to hold my head steady during the MRI scan and throughout the more delicate procedure of skewering my brain without damaging the useful bits.
In the surgical suite there was a bustle of activity as half a dozen surgeons and nursing staff prepared for the procedure. My head head frame was bolted to the surgical table, and plastic sheets were draped over me to create an antiseptic site for the skull opening.
The drilling of two nickel-sized holes in my skull was every bit as loud as I had been warned. But no pain, just a feeling of pressure.
\”Somewhere in the middle of all this is me, wide awake,” says Forestell. The clear plastic barrier divides the room into sterile and non-sterile zones. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
In the back of the suite, a cluster of medical IT specialists sat in front of computer screens ready to track and to provide feedback and directions as to where the probes needed to go in my brain.
I know all of this because I was awake — wide awake — for the duration of the six-hour long surgery. I have spent plenty of time around hospitals, both as a patient and as the c
hild of a hospital worker. I\’ve covered many medical stories as a reporter. So rather than fear, the prospect of this procedure filled me with curiosity. How would it feel? What would it change? Would it work?
A strange experience indeed
The surgical suite hummed with the normal hubbub of a workplace. The surgeons and I kept up an amiable conversation as I asked questions about what was happening. In the background, a steady staccato, like the noise of a Geiger counter, attested to the continuing activity in my brain.
Clicks coming through a loudspeaker amplified the activity of each busy cell.
It was a strange experience to have someone rooting through your brain.
A closer look at how the surgeons implant the sensors on Forestell’s brain that will eventually provide the electrical impulses to help override some of the physical symptoms of Parkinson\’s. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
There was no feeling to it as the brain has no pain sensors. But as the probes slid into place, there were tell-tale signs that gave away what was happening — most commonly a tingling feeling in an arm or leg — as the surgeons carefully threaded the electrodes through my brain to reach the basal ganglia.
Along the way they asked me whether I could recite the days of the week, the months of the year backwards skipping every second month, and the progression of prime numbers to the fifth integer.
Once the probes were in place, it was time to install the wiring and other hardware. For this part of the surgery, anesthetic was required and I was put soundly to sleep. Both probes are attached to wires that are threaded through the skull and under the skin behind the ear, down the neck, over the clavicle and finally are plugged into a battery-operated pulse generator — similar to a pacemaker — that sits just under the skin of the chest. While the surgery involves all the usual risks of infection, hemorrhage, stroke and heart attack, side effects are rare.
A shocking conclusion
So, does it work?
Well, you can see the party trick I\’ve been boasting about in the video above. You be the judge.
Here is how it works.
Once the electrodes have been implanted in the brain, their ability to deliver the required electrical stimulation is controlled by a pulse transmitter and an adapted cellphone.
Forestell one week post-operation. Aside from what he describes as a terrible haircut, the only sign of surgical intervention is the ‘railway track’ of staples closing the wound. The procedure took less than 48 hours from hospital check-in to discharge. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
The cellphone carries an app that controls the frequency of the electrical stimulation of the basal ganglia. The stimulator is set to discharge regular electrical pulses day and night that miraculously override or disrupt the scrambled neural instructions that are a Parkinson\’s hallmark.
Suddenly I am able to walk normally. There are no tremors. The annoying signs of dyskinesia — those involuntary movements I described above — seem to disappear.
WATCH | In September 2022, before undergoing DBS, Harry Forestell described to his audiences what he was undertaking:
Harry Forestell opens up about the next stage in his treatment for Parkinson\’s
The host of CBC New Brunswick News at 6 speaks with Rachel Cave about how deep brain stimulation is expected to help him deal with his Parkinson\’s disease diagnosis.
Regaining control of motor functions is nothing short of a miracle, but it will not work for every Parkinson\’s patient. Those with other conditions are not suited for DBS. It alleviates motor symptoms most successfully among those who respond well to levodopa. Where it is successful in those cases, it means a decrease in that drug and its side effects.
I have been able to cut my medication in half and I recently
returned to work after four months away. I sleep soundly and, while I still tire easily, my mood has brightened.
Parkinson\’s disease will continue to dog my life. DBS may allow me another 10 or 15 years without disabling tremors, though they will probably return at some point as they continue to grow in intensity. There are other insidious effects of Parkinson\’s that are not affected by DBS.
But for the time being, it is as though the disease is caged.
On a leash.
I can hear it barking, but for now at least, it can\’t bite me.
Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? Here\’s more info on how to pitch to us.
Before surgery, a metal frame was attached to Harry Forestell’s head to keep it still during an MRI scan. During surgery, the frame was bolted to the surgical table. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
This First Person article is written by Harry Forestell, host of CBC News New Brunswick at Six, who draws upon his experiences with Parkinson\’s disease.
My latest party trick is a real attention grabber.
It\’s a vivid illustration of the before and after effects of my recent treatment for Parkinson\’s disease. Proof of just how much a little poking around in the brain can achieve.
The treatment is called deep brain stimulation (DBS). It involves implanting thin electrodes into the brain where they emit tiny electrical pulses. Those pulses, applied continuously to just the right section of grey matter, stimulate centres in the brain that control signals sent to your muscles. In the basal ganglia, the engine house of the brain, signals are sent to the body ordering everything from speaking, to swallowing, to walking and touching. When those signals don\’t get through, or when the instructions get scrambled, the body\’s reaction can be cruel. Hands tremble uncontrollably, legs shake, walking becomes increasingly difficult, even swallowing is a challenge.
These are all early symptoms of Parkinson\’s disease and the list is by no means exhaustive.
Parkinson\’s is considered a chronic but not fatal disease. As neurologists will often explain, you will die with Parkinson\’s, not from Parkinson\’s. While true, it doesn\’t really capture the creeping, insidious progress of the disease as it deprives victims of the ability to control their own bodies.
Medical stories like this have always been a source of fascination for me. I worked for several years as a medicine and science reporter, covering stories that included the panic over mad cow disease in the U.K. I produced radio features on brain development and decay.
Little did I know that I eventually would be reporting on my own brain malady.
A shock of a diagnosis, and a relief
The day my diagnosis of Parkinson\’s disease was officially confirmed came as much of a relief as a shock.
It was 2015 and for the previous two years, my wife Jenny and I had been careering back and forth between hope and despair. My Fredericton neurologist, Dr. Eva Pniak, a patient and persevering soul, suspected Parkinson\’s, but suggested the problems I experienced walking and with my tremoring hands could also be explained by a modestly more benign condition called essential tremor.
These are just some of the drugs used to control Parkinson\’s disease. While levodopa is initially the most effective medication, it produces side effects that require other drugs that produce their own side effects. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
She referred me to a specialist in Toronto where the diagnosis was conclusive.
At 53, I had Parkinson\’s.
From leaping out of a tree to dancing the tango, very little happens in the body without first being ordered by the basal ganglia. Those orders are sent at the speed of light through nerve networks with the help of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. It is the as-yet unexplained decline in the brain\’s dopamine-producing cells that leads to movement disorders like Parkinson\’s.
It\’s a simple equation: no dopamine, no movement.
With Parkinson\’s, those dopamine cells start quietly dying off years before symptoms first appear. Scientists aren\’t certain why this happens, or why the process cannot be stopped or slowed.
Doctors can replace some of the lost dopamine with a medication called levodopa, but it causes a side effect known as dyskinesia — sudden uncontrolled muscle movements in the arms and upper body that create a writhing, torquing motion. As doctors increase doses of levodopa to stave off Parkinson\’s tremors, dyskinesia increases.
The payoff is in quality of life for patients
Neurologists have been experimenting with DBS to treat Parkinson\’s and other movement disorders for nearly 40 years. In 1997, the U.S.-based Food and Drug Administration approved DBS to treat Parkinson\’s disease.
Why not more? The simple reason is that it is a treatment involving intricate brain surgery by highly specialized surgical teams and requiring considerable aftercare.
WATCH | How deep brain stimulation can help overcome debilitating effects of Parkinson\’s:
See the almost instantaneous effects of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease treatment
Harry Forestell shows how DBS therapy can work in daily life — and demonstrates what happens when he turns it off.
\”The surgical expertise is extremely important,\” he said.
\”You have to have a surgeon that knows how to do the procedure and knows how to put the electrodes in the right spot. But then after the surgery, you need an expertise in doing all of the programming and adjusting the stimulators and also adjusting the medication doses which typically change after the operation,\” he said.
\”So it\’s a very complicated procedure that requires a team and it\’s the neurologist and the nurses after the surgery that are doing a great deal of the work in optimizing the responses.\”
It is a procedure, Lang points out, that requires support from provincial governments. The payoff is a treatment that can offer major improvements in quality of life for Parkinson\’s patients.
\”The Ontario government has appreciated the importance,\” said Lang, adding he feels lucky to have a team of expert neurosurgeons, neurologists, nurses and others to support patients.
\”The government recognized the importance of this technique and have provided what\’s called volume-based funding to allow us to operate on a much larger number than most centres.\”
My own experience is a vivid illustration of the relief DBS can bring to some Parkinson\’s patients.
Holes in my head
I entered Toronto Western Hospital on Sept. 30, 2022 with an idea of what was going to happen, but no real appreciation of what it would feel or sound like.
A metal structure was bolted to Forestell\’s skull prior to surgery at Toronto Western Hospital in September. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
I knew at some point before the end of the day someone was going to drill a hole in my head. At least one hole. Maybe two.
I was forewarned by reliable parties that the sound of that drilling would be akin to an airplane taking off. More like Concorde taking off inside my head!
Before surgery I had a metal structure bolted to my skull, not unlike the square lightshade at the top of a lamppost.
This was meant to hold my head steady during the MRI scan and throughout the more delicate procedure of skewering my brain without damaging the useful bits.
In the surgical suite there was a bustle of activity as half a dozen surgeons and nursing staff prepared for the procedure. My head head frame was bolted to the surgical table, and plastic sheets were draped over me to create an antiseptic site for the skull opening.
The drilling of two nickel-sized holes in my skull was every bit as loud as I had been warned. But no pain, just a feeling of pressure.
\”Somewhere in the middle of all this is me, wide awake,” says Forestell. The clear plastic barrier divides the room into sterile and non-sterile zones. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
In the back of the suite, a cluster of medical IT specialists sat in front of computer screens ready to track and to provide feedback and directions as to where the probes needed to go in my brain.
I know all of this because I was awake — wide awake — for the duration of the six-hour long surgery. I have spent plenty of time around hospitals, both as a patient and as the c
hild of a hospital worker. I\’ve covered many medical stories as a reporter. So rather than fear, the prospect of this procedure filled me with curiosity. How would it feel? What would it change? Would it work?
A strange experience indeed
The surgical suite hummed with the normal hubbub of a workplace. The surgeons and I kept up an amiable conversation as I asked questions about what was happening. In the background, a steady staccato, like the noise of a Geiger counter, attested to the continuing activity in my brain.
Clicks coming through a loudspeaker amplified the activity of each busy cell.
It was a strange experience to have someone rooting through your brain.
A closer look at how the surgeons implant the sensors on Forestell’s brain that will eventually provide the electrical impulses to help override some of the physical symptoms of Parkinson\’s. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
There was no feeling to it as the brain has no pain sensors. But as the probes slid into place, there were tell-tale signs that gave away what was happening — most commonly a tingling feeling in an arm or leg — as the surgeons carefully threaded the electrodes through my brain to reach the basal ganglia.
Along the way they asked me whether I could recite the days of the week, the months of the year backwards skipping every second month, and the progression of prime numbers to the fifth integer.
Once the probes were in place, it was time to install the wiring and other hardware. For this part of the surgery, anesthetic was required and I was put soundly to sleep. Both probes are attached to wires that are threaded through the skull and under the skin behind the ear, down the neck, over the clavicle and finally are plugged into a battery-operated pulse generator — similar to a pacemaker — that sits just under the skin of the chest. While the surgery involves all the usual risks of infection, hemorrhage, stroke and heart attack, side effects are rare.
A shocking conclusion
So, does it work?
Well, you can see the party trick I\’ve been boasting about in the video above. You be the judge.
Here is how it works.
Once the electrodes have been implanted in the brain, their ability to deliver the required electrical stimulation is controlled by a pulse transmitter and an adapted cellphone.
Forestell one week post-operation. Aside from what he describes as a terrible haircut, the only sign of surgical intervention is the ‘railway track’ of staples closing the wound. The procedure took less than 48 hours from hospital check-in to discharge. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
The cellphone carries an app that controls the frequency of the electrical stimulation of the basal ganglia. The stimulator is set to discharge regular electrical pulses day and night that miraculously override or disrupt the scrambled neural instructions that are a Parkinson\’s hallmark.
Suddenly I am able to walk normally. There are no tremors. The annoying signs of dyskinesia — those involuntary movements I described above — seem to disappear.
WATCH | In September 2022, before undergoing DBS, Harry Forestell described to his audiences what he was undertaking:
Harry Forestell opens up about the next stage in his treatment for Parkinson\’s
The host of CBC New Brunswick News at 6 speaks with Rachel Cave about how deep brain stimulation is expected to help him deal with his Parkinson\’s disease diagnosis.
Regaining control of motor functions is nothing short of a miracle, but it will not work for every Parkinson\’s patient. Those with other conditions are not suited for DBS. It alleviates motor symptoms most successfully among those who respond well to levodopa. Where it is successful in those cases, it means a decrease in that drug and its side effects.
I have been able to cut my medication in half and I recently
returned to work after four months away. I sleep soundly and, while I still tire easily, my mood has brightened.
Parkinson\’s disease will continue to dog my life. DBS may allow me another 10 or 15 years without disabling tremors, though they will probably return at some point as they continue to grow in intensity. There are other insidious effects of Parkinson\’s that are not affected by DBS.
But for the time being, it is as though the disease is caged.
On a leash.
I can hear it barking, but for now at least, it can\’t bite me.
Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? Here\’s more info on how to pitch to us.
Before surgery, a metal frame was attached to Harry Forestell’s head to keep it still during an MRI scan. During surgery, the frame was bolted to the surgical table. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
This First Person article is written by Harry Forestell, host of CBC News New Brunswick at Six, who draws upon his experiences with Parkinson\’s disease.
My latest party trick is a real attention grabber.
It\’s a vivid illustration of the before and after effects of my recent treatment for Parkinson\’s disease. Proof of just how much a little poking around in the brain can achieve.
The treatment is called deep brain stimulation (DBS). It involves implanting thin electrodes into the brain where they emit tiny electrical pulses. Those pulses, applied continuously to just the right section of grey matter, stimulate centres in the brain that control signals sent to your muscles. In the basal ganglia, the engine house of the brain, signals are sent to the body ordering everything from speaking, to swallowing, to walking and touching. When those signals don\’t get through, or when the instructions get scrambled, the body\’s reaction can be cruel. Hands tremble uncontrollably, legs shake, walking becomes increasingly difficult, even swallowing is a challenge.
These are all early symptoms of Parkinson\’s disease and the list is by no means exhaustive.
Parkinson\’s is considered a chronic but not fatal disease. As neurologists will often explain, you will die with Parkinson\’s, not from Parkinson\’s. While true, it doesn\’t really capture the creeping, insidious progress of the disease as it deprives victims of the ability to control their own bodies.
Medical stories like this have always been a source of fascination for me. I worked for several years as a medicine and science reporter, covering stories that included the panic over mad cow disease in the U.K. I produced radio features on brain development and decay.
Little did I know that I eventually would be reporting on my own brain malady.
A shock of a diagnosis, and a relief
The day my diagnosis of Parkinson\’s disease was officially confirmed came as much of a relief as a shock.
It was 2015 and for the previous two years, my wife Jenny and I had been careering back and forth between hope and despair. My Fredericton neurologist, Dr. Eva Pniak, a patient and persevering soul, suspected Parkinson\’s, but suggested the problems I experienced walking and with my tremoring hands could also be explained by a modestly more benign condition called essential tremor.
These are just some of the drugs used to control Parkinson\’s disease. While levodopa is initially the most effective medication, it produces side effects that require other drugs that produce their own side effects. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
She referred me to a specialist in Toronto where the diagnosis was conclusive.
At 53, I had Parkinson\’s.
From leaping out of a tree to dancing the tango, very little happens in the body without first being ordered by the basal ganglia. Those orders are sent at the speed of light through nerve networks with the help of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. It is the as-yet unexplained decline in the brain\’s dopamine-producing cells that leads to movement disorders like Parkinson\’s.
It\’s a simple equation: no dopamine, no movement.
With Parkinson\’s, those dopamine cells start quietly dying off years before symptoms first appear. Scientists aren\’t certain why this happens, or why the process cannot be stopped or slowed.
Doctors can replace some of the lost dopamine with a medication called levodopa, but it causes a side effect known as dyskinesia — sudden uncontrolled muscle movements in the arms and upper body that create a writhing, torquing motion. As doctors increase doses of levodopa to stave off Parkinson\’s tremors, dyskinesia increases.
The payoff is in quality of life for patients
Neurologists have been experimenting with DBS to treat Parkinson\’s and other movement disorders for nearly 40 years. In 1997, the U.S.-based Food and Drug Administration approved DBS to treat Parkinson\’s disease.
Why not more? The simple reason is that it is a treatment involving intricate brain surgery by highly specialized surgical teams and requiring considerable aftercare.
WATCH | How deep brain stimulation can help overcome debilitating effects of Parkinson\’s:
See the almost instantaneous effects of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease treatment
Harry Forestell shows how DBS therapy can work in daily life — and demonstrates what happens when he turns it off.
\”The surgical expertise is extremely important,\” he said.
\”You have to have a surgeon that knows how to do the procedure and knows how to put the electrodes in the right spot. But then after the surgery, you need an expertise in doing all of the programming and adjusting the stimulators and also adjusting the medication doses which typically change after the operation,\” he said.
\”So it\’s a very complicated procedure that requires a team and it\’s the neurologist and the nurses after the surgery that are doing a great deal of the work in optimizing the responses.\”
It is a procedure, Lang points out, that requires support from provincial governments. The payoff is a treatment that can offer major improvements in quality of life for Parkinson\’s patients.
\”The Ontario government has appreciated the importance,\” said Lang, adding he feels lucky to have a team of expert neurosurgeons, neurologists, nurses and others to support patients.
\”The government recognized the importance of this technique and have provided what\’s called volume-based funding to allow us to operate on a much larger number than most centres.\”
My own experience is a vivid illustration of the relief DBS can bring to some Parkinson\’s patients.
Holes in my head
I entered Toronto Western Hospital on Sept. 30, 2022 with an idea of what was going to happen, but no real appreciation of what it would feel or sound like.
A metal structure was bolted to Forestell\’s skull prior to surgery at Toronto Western Hospital in September. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
I knew at some point before the end of the day someone was going to drill a hole in my head. At least one hole. Maybe two.
I was forewarned by reliable parties that the sound of that drilling would be akin to an airplane taking off. More like Concorde taking off inside my head!
Before surgery I had a metal structure bolted to my skull, not unlike the square lightshade at the top of a lamppost.
This was meant to hold my head steady during the MRI scan and throughout the more delicate procedure of skewering my brain without damaging the useful bits.
In the surgical suite there was a bustle of activity as half a dozen surgeons and nursing staff prepared for the procedure. My head head frame was bolted to the surgical table, and plastic sheets were draped over me to create an antiseptic site for the skull opening.
The drilling of two nickel-sized holes in my skull was every bit as loud as I had been warned. But no pain, just a feeling of pressure.
\”Somewhere in the middle of all this is me, wide awake,” says Forestell. The clear plastic barrier divides the room into sterile and non-sterile zones. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
In the back of the suite, a cluster of medical IT specialists sat in front of computer screens ready to track and to provide feedback and directions as to where the probes needed to go in my brain.
I know all of this because I was awake — wide awake — for the duration of the six-hour long surgery. I have spent plenty of time around hospitals, both as a patient and as the c
hild of a hospital worker. I\’ve covered many medical stories as a reporter. So rather than fear, the prospect of this procedure filled me with curiosity. How would it feel? What would it change? Would it work?
A strange experience indeed
The surgical suite hummed with the normal hubbub of a workplace. The surgeons and I kept up an amiable conversation as I asked questions about what was happening. In the background, a steady staccato, like the noise of a Geiger counter, attested to the continuing activity in my brain.
Clicks coming through a loudspeaker amplified the activity of each busy cell.
It was a strange experience to have someone rooting through your brain.
A closer look at how the surgeons implant the sensors on Forestell’s brain that will eventually provide the electrical impulses to help override some of the physical symptoms of Parkinson\’s. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
There was no feeling to it as the brain has no pain sensors. But as the probes slid into place, there were tell-tale signs that gave away what was happening — most commonly a tingling feeling in an arm or leg — as the surgeons carefully threaded the electrodes through my brain to reach the basal ganglia.
Along the way they asked me whether I could recite the days of the week, the months of the year backwards skipping every second month, and the progression of prime numbers to the fifth integer.
Once the probes were in place, it was time to install the wiring and other hardware. For this part of the surgery, anesthetic was required and I was put soundly to sleep. Both probes are attached to wires that are threaded through the skull and under the skin behind the ear, down the neck, over the clavicle and finally are plugged into a battery-operated pulse generator — similar to a pacemaker — that sits just under the skin of the chest. While the surgery involves all the usual risks of infection, hemorrhage, stroke and heart attack, side effects are rare.
A shocking conclusion
So, does it work?
Well, you can see the party trick I\’ve been boasting about in the video above. You be the judge.
Here is how it works.
Once the electrodes have been implanted in the brain, their ability to deliver the required electrical stimulation is controlled by a pulse transmitter and an adapted cellphone.
Forestell one week post-operation. Aside from what he describes as a terrible haircut, the only sign of surgical intervention is the ‘railway track’ of staples closing the wound. The procedure took less than 48 hours from hospital check-in to discharge. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
The cellphone carries an app that controls the frequency of the electrical stimulation of the basal ganglia. The stimulator is set to discharge regular electrical pulses day and night that miraculously override or disrupt the scrambled neural instructions that are a Parkinson\’s hallmark.
Suddenly I am able to walk normally. There are no tremors. The annoying signs of dyskinesia — those involuntary movements I described above — seem to disappear.
WATCH | In September 2022, before undergoing DBS, Harry Forestell described to his audiences what he was undertaking:
Harry Forestell opens up about the next stage in his treatment for Parkinson\’s
The host of CBC New Brunswick News at 6 speaks with Rachel Cave about how deep brain stimulation is expected to help him deal with his Parkinson\’s disease diagnosis.
Regaining control of motor functions is nothing short of a miracle, but it will not work for every Parkinson\’s patient. Those with other conditions are not suited for DBS. It alleviates motor symptoms most successfully among those who respond well to levodopa. Where it is successful in those cases, it means a decrease in that drug and its side effects.
I have been able to cut my medication in half and I recently
returned to work after four months away. I sleep soundly and, while I still tire easily, my mood has brightened.
Parkinson\’s disease will continue to dog my life. DBS may allow me another 10 or 15 years without disabling tremors, though they will probably return at some point as they continue to grow in intensity. There are other insidious effects of Parkinson\’s that are not affected by DBS.
But for the time being, it is as though the disease is caged.
On a leash.
I can hear it barking, but for now at least, it can\’t bite me.
Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? Here\’s more info on how to pitch to us.
Before surgery, a metal frame was attached to Harry Forestell’s head to keep it still during an MRI scan. During surgery, the frame was bolted to the surgical table. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
This First Person article is written by Harry Forestell, host of CBC News New Brunswick at Six, who draws upon his experiences with Parkinson\’s disease.
My latest party trick is a real attention grabber.
It\’s a vivid illustration of the before and after effects of my recent treatment for Parkinson\’s disease. Proof of just how much a little poking around in the brain can achieve.
The treatment is called deep brain stimulation (DBS). It involves implanting thin electrodes into the brain where they emit tiny electrical pulses. Those pulses, applied continuously to just the right section of grey matter, stimulate centres in the brain that control signals sent to your muscles. In the basal ganglia, the engine house of the brain, signals are sent to the body ordering everything from speaking, to swallowing, to walking and touching. When those signals don\’t get through, or when the instructions get scrambled, the body\’s reaction can be cruel. Hands tremble uncontrollably, legs shake, walking becomes increasingly difficult, even swallowing is a challenge.
These are all early symptoms of Parkinson\’s disease and the list is by no means exhaustive.
Parkinson\’s is considered a chronic but not fatal disease. As neurologists will often explain, you will die with Parkinson\’s, not from Parkinson\’s. While true, it doesn\’t really capture the creeping, insidious progress of the disease as it deprives victims of the ability to control their own bodies.
Medical stories like this have always been a source of fascination for me. I worked for several years as a medicine and science reporter, covering stories that included the panic over mad cow disease in the U.K. I produced radio features on brain development and decay.
Little did I know that I eventually would be reporting on my own brain malady.
A shock of a diagnosis, and a relief
The day my diagnosis of Parkinson\’s disease was officially confirmed came as much of a relief as a shock.
It was 2015 and for the previous two years, my wife Jenny and I had been careering back and forth between hope and despair. My Fredericton neurologist, Dr. Eva Pniak, a patient and persevering soul, suspected Parkinson\’s, but suggested the problems I experienced walking and with my tremoring hands could also be explained by a modestly more benign condition called essential tremor.
These are just some of the drugs used to control Parkinson\’s disease. While levodopa is initially the most effective medication, it produces side effects that require other drugs that produce their own side effects. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
She referred me to a specialist in Toronto where the diagnosis was conclusive.
At 53, I had Parkinson\’s.
From leaping out of a tree to dancing the tango, very little happens in the body without first being ordered by the basal ganglia. Those orders are sent at the speed of light through nerve networks with the help of a neurotransmitter called dopamine. It is the as-yet unexplained decline in the brain\’s dopamine-producing cells that leads to movement disorders like Parkinson\’s.
It\’s a simple equation: no dopamine, no movement.
With Parkinson\’s, those dopamine cells start quietly dying off years before symptoms first appear. Scientists aren\’t certain why this happens, or why the process cannot be stopped or slowed.
Doctors can replace some of the lost dopamine with a medication called levodopa, but it causes a side effect known as dyskinesia — sudden uncontrolled muscle movements in the arms and upper body that create a writhing, torquing motion. As doctors increase doses of levodopa to stave off Parkinson\’s tremors, dyskinesia increases.
The payoff is in quality of life for patients
Neurologists have been experimenting with DBS to treat Parkinson\’s and other movement disorders for nearly 40 years. In 1997, the U.S.-based Food and Drug Administration approved DBS to treat Parkinson\’s disease.
Why not more? The simple reason is that it is a treatment involving intricate brain surgery by highly specialized surgical teams and requiring considerable aftercare.
WATCH | How deep brain stimulation can help overcome debilitating effects of Parkinson\’s:
See the almost instantaneous effects of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s disease treatment
Harry Forestell shows how DBS therapy can work in daily life — and demonstrates what happens when he turns it off.
\”The surgical expertise is extremely important,\” he said.
\”You have to have a surgeon that knows how to do the procedure and knows how to put the electrodes in the right spot. But then after the surgery, you need an expertise in doing all of the programming and adjusting the stimulators and also adjusting the medication doses which typically change after the operation,\” he said.
\”So it\’s a very complicated procedure that requires a team and it\’s the neurologist and the nurses after the surgery that are doing a great deal of the work in optimizing the responses.\”
It is a procedure, Lang points out, that requires support from provincial governments. The payoff is a treatment that can offer major improvements in quality of life for Parkinson\’s patients.
\”The Ontario government has appreciated the importance,\” said Lang, adding he feels lucky to have a team of expert neurosurgeons, neurologists, nurses and others to support patients.
\”The government recognized the importance of this technique and have provided what\’s called volume-based funding to allow us to operate on a much larger number than most centres.\”
My own experience is a vivid illustration of the relief DBS can bring to some Parkinson\’s patients.
Holes in my head
I entered Toronto Western Hospital on Sept. 30, 2022 with an idea of what was going to happen, but no real appreciation of what it would feel or sound like.
A metal structure was bolted to Forestell\’s skull prior to surgery at Toronto Western Hospital in September. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
I knew at some point before the end of the day someone was going to drill a hole in my head. At least one hole. Maybe two.
I was forewarned by reliable parties that the sound of that drilling would be akin to an airplane taking off. More like Concorde taking off inside my head!
Before surgery I had a metal structure bolted to my skull, not unlike the square lightshade at the top of a lamppost.
This was meant to hold my head steady during the MRI scan and throughout the more delicate procedure of skewering my brain without damaging the useful bits.
In the surgical suite there was a bustle of activity as half a dozen surgeons and nursing staff prepared for the procedure. My head head frame was bolted to the surgical table, and plastic sheets were draped over me to create an antiseptic site for the skull opening.
The drilling of two nickel-sized holes in my skull was every bit as loud as I had been warned. But no pain, just a feeling of pressure.
\”Somewhere in the middle of all this is me, wide awake,” says Forestell. The clear plastic barrier divides the room into sterile and non-sterile zones. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
In the back of the suite, a cluster of medical IT specialists sat in front of computer screens ready to track and to provide feedback and directions as to where the probes needed to go in my brain.
I know all of this because I was awake — wide awake — for the duration of the six-hour long surgery. I have spent plenty of time around hospitals, both as a patient and as the c
hild of a hospital worker. I\’ve covered many medical stories as a reporter. So rather than fear, the prospect of this procedure filled me with curiosity. How would it feel? What would it change? Would it work?
A strange experience indeed
The surgical suite hummed with the normal hubbub of a workplace. The surgeons and I kept up an amiable conversation as I asked questions about what was happening. In the background, a steady staccato, like the noise of a Geiger counter, attested to the continuing activity in my brain.
Clicks coming through a loudspeaker amplified the activity of each busy cell.
It was a strange experience to have someone rooting through your brain.
A closer look at how the surgeons implant the sensors on Forestell’s brain that will eventually provide the electrical impulses to help override some of the physical symptoms of Parkinson\’s. (Submitted by Harry Forestell)
There was no feeling to it as the brain has no pain sensors. But as the probes slid into place, there were tell-tale signs that gave away what was happening — most commonly a tingling feeling in an arm or leg — as the surgeons carefully threaded the electrodes through my brain to reach the basal ganglia.
Along the way they asked me whether I could recite the days of the week, the months of the year backwards skipping every second month, and the progression of prime numbers to the fifth integer.
Once the probes were in place, it was time to install the wiring and other hardware. For this part of the surgery, anesthetic was required and I was put soundly to sleep. Both probes are attached to wires that are threaded through the skull and under the skin behind the ear, down the neck, over the clavicle and finally are plugged into a battery-operated pulse generator — similar to a pacemaker — that sits just under the skin of the chest. While the surgery involves all the usual risks of infection, hemorrhage, stroke and heart attack, side effects are rare.
A shocking conclusion
So, does it work?
Well, you can see the party trick I\’ve been boasting about in the video above. You be the judge.
Here is how it works.
Once the electrodes have been implanted in the brain, their ability to deliver the required electrical stimulation is controlled by a pulse transmitter and an adapted cellphone.
Forestell one week post-operation. Aside from what he describes as a terrible haircut, the only sign of surgical intervention is the ‘railway track’ of staples closing the wound. The procedure took less than 48 hours from hospital check-in to discharge. (Harry Forestell/CBC)
The cellphone carries an app that controls the frequency of the electrical stimulation of the basal ganglia. The stimulator is set to discharge regular electrical pulses day and night that miraculously override or disrupt the scrambled neural instructions that are a Parkinson\’s hallmark.
Suddenly I am able to walk normally. There are no tremors. The annoying signs of dyskinesia — those involuntary movements I described above — seem to disappear.
WATCH | In September 2022, before undergoing DBS, Harry Forestell described to his audiences what he was undertaking:
Harry Forestell opens up about the next stage in his treatment for Parkinson\’s
The host of CBC New Brunswick News at 6 speaks with Rachel Cave about how deep brain stimulation is expected to help him deal with his Parkinson\’s disease diagnosis.
Regaining control of motor functions is nothing short of a miracle, but it will not work for every Parkinson\’s patient. Those with other conditions are not suited for DBS. It alleviates motor symptoms most successfully among those who respond well to levodopa. Where it is successful in those cases, it means a decrease in that drug and its side effects.
I have been able to cut my medication in half and I recently
returned to work after four months away. I sleep soundly and, while I still tire easily, my mood has brightened.
Parkinson\’s disease will continue to dog my life. DBS may allow me another 10 or 15 years without disabling tremors, though they will probably return at some point as they continue to grow in intensity. There are other insidious effects of Parkinson\’s that are not affected by DBS.
But for the time being, it is as though the disease is caged.
On a leash.
I can hear it barking, but for now at least, it can\’t bite me.
Do you have a compelling personal story that can bring understanding or help others? Here\’s more info on how to pitch to us.
سنگاپور: جمعہ کو 2 ڈالر فی بیرل کی کمی کے بعد پیر کو ابتدائی ایشیائی تجارت میں تیل کی قیمتوں میں تھوڑی سی تبدیلی ہوئی، کیونکہ ریاستہائے متحدہ میں بڑھتی ہوئی سپلائی اور شرح سود میں مزید اضافے کی پیشگوئیوں نے چین کی طلب کی بحالی پر امید کو ٹھنڈا کردیا۔
برینٹ کروڈ 0051 GMT تک 9 سینٹ، یا 0.1%، 82.91 ڈالر فی بیرل تک گر گیا۔
یو ایس ویسٹ ٹیکساس انٹرمیڈیٹ کروڈ مارچ کے لیے، جس کی میعاد منگل کو ختم ہو رہی ہے، 6 سینٹ کے اضافے سے 76.40 ڈالر فی بیرل پر تھی۔
زیادہ فعال اپریل معاہدہ 9 سینٹ گر کر 76.46 ڈالر پر آگیا۔ امریکہ کی جانب سے خام تیل اور پٹرول کی زیادہ انوینٹری کی اطلاع کے بعد بینچ مارکس گزشتہ ہفتے تقریباً 4 فیصد کم بند ہوئے۔
توانائی کے پہلوؤں کے تجزیہ کاروں نے ایک نوٹ میں کہا، واشنگٹن نے اسٹریٹجک پیٹرولیم ریزرو (SPR) سے 26 ملین بیرل خام تیل جاری کرنے کے منصوبوں کا بھی اعلان کیا جو مئی تک ڈبلیو ٹی آئی کے معاہدوں کے ڈیلیوری پوائنٹ، کشنگ، اوکلاہوما میں زیادہ ذخیرہ اندوزی کا باعث بن سکتا ہے۔
توقعات کہ امریکی فیڈرل ریزرو شرح سود میں اضافہ جاری رکھے گا جس سے ڈالر مضبوط ہو سکتا ہے تیل کی قیمتوں کو بھی محدود کر سکتا ہے۔
ایک مضبوط گرین بیک ڈالر کی قیمت والا تیل دیگر کرنسیوں کے حاملین کے لیے زیادہ مہنگا بنا دیتا ہے۔ رسد میں بہتری کی ایک اور علامت میں، قازقستان PCK Schwedt ریفائنری کے لیے مارچ میں روس کی Druzhba پائپ لائن کے ذریعے جرمنی کو 100,000 ٹن تیل فراہم کرے گا۔
سی ایم سی مارکیٹس کی تجزیہ کار ٹینا ٹینگ نے کہا کہ ایشیا میں، سرمایہ کار جائیداد کے شعبے اور اس کی معیشت میں بحالی کے لیے پیپلز بینک آف چائنا کے اس کے رہن کی شرح کے فیصلے پر نظریں جمائے ہوئے ہیں۔
چین دنیا کا سب سے بڑا خام تیل درآمد کرنے والا ملک ہے۔
تجزیہ کاروں کو توقع ہے کہ نقل و حمل کے ایندھن کی بڑھتی ہوئی طلب اور نئی ریفائنریز کے آن اسٹریم آنے کی وجہ سے چین کی درآمدات 2023 میں اب تک کی بلند ترین سطح پر پہنچ جائیں گی۔ یورپی یونین کی پابندیوں کے بعد چین، بھارت کے ساتھ ساتھ روسی خام تیل کا سب سے بڑا خریدار بن گیا ہے۔
تجارتی اعداد و شمار سے پتہ چلتا ہے کہ جنوری میں ہندوستان کی روسی تیل کی درآمدات 1.4 ملین بیرل یومیہ ریکارڈ کی گئیں۔
It was 5.30 a.m. on a cold winter’s morning at Antonov Airport, when Vitalii Rudenko, a commander of the Ukrainian airfield’s national guard base, awoke to a phone call.
Get up, the duty officer called down the line, and be ready for combat.
Minutes earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin began broadcasting a state address, in which he announced the start of a “special military operation” in Ukraine. As the speech finished, booms resounded across Kyiv. Columns of Russian tanks began pouring into the country, heading for the capital.
Rudenko dressed quickly and issued an order for his soldiers to do the same. His unit of about 120 soldiers had been at the Hostomel airport for almost a week, preparing for the possibility of war.
But he didn’t actually believe it would happen.
With a unit of about 120, Vitalii Rudenko, a commander of Antonov Airport’s national guard base, was the airfield’s first line of defence.
Ashleigh Stewart
Rudenko was out the door and en route to the aircraft hangars in his car when the first missile made landfall. It exploded near the airport’s administration building.
“I heard it, but I didn’t see it,” Rudenko tells Global News.
Antonov Airport, an international cargo terminal with a long runway built to handle the world’s largest cargo plane, the Antonov An-225, was a key component of Putin’s planned blitzkrieg on Kyiv. The airbridge would have allowed Russian troops and heavy equipment to be ferried in on large aircraft, leaving just 10 kilometres between them and the gates of the capital.
The destroyed Mriya is now surrounded by the charred remains of Russian equipment and spent ammunition.
Ashleigh Stewart
But Russia never did take Kyiv; because what transpired over the next five weeks was a series of blunders, ending in a humiliating retreat. A slew of tactical errors and miscalculations left the Russians bogged down on the capital’s periphery, stalled by poor military planning, significant logistical problems, low combat readiness and, perhaps most significantly, a very obvious misjudgment in the Ukrainians’ ability to fight back.
And experts point to one place where the Russian army’s plan for a rapid-fire victory misfired more than anywhere else: Hostomel.
Just how the Armed Forces of Ukraine, many times outnumbered by as much as 12:1, thwarted the seizure of Antonov Airport and forced Russia into a war of attrition on the outskirts of Kyiv, has become the subject of widespread veneration.
The Russians retreated from Hostomel at the end of March, after suffering heavy losses.
Ashleigh Stewart
But those who fought in the battle say it came down to one simple thing: repeatedly destroying their own infrastructure — bridges, dams, runways — to manipulate the terrain. That, and guerilla tactics, expert knowledge of their own back yard and, of course, Russian missteps.
Global News visited Hostomel in August and has spent months interviewing Ukrainian servicemen, commanders, Antonov officials and officials to assemble a detailed account of how the battle for Antonov Airport changed the course of the war.
The first line of defence was Rudenko’s unit.
Spread out across airfield grounds, as the sun crested the horizon, they waited for the onslaught.
But for the next few hours, there was just silence.
Prepping for war under the cover of darkness
Across town, Volodymyr Smus was in his car, racing to the airport. As the head of its control and dispatch centre, Smus was in charge of much of the airfield’s fleet of aircraft. So when his son called him at about 5 a.m. to tell him of explosions being heard at an airport nearby, Smus’s first thought was for Antonov Airport’s planes — and one in particular.
The Antonov 225 — known as the “Mriya,” which is Ukrainian for “dream” — had been parked up in an aircraft hangar since Feb. 5, as engineers worked on an engine problem.
The repairs were completed at 9.45 p.m. the prior evening, mere hours before war broke out. In the weeks that followed, much would be said about whether the plane should have been immediately moved outside the country — to Leipzig, Germany, for instance, one of the airfield’s partner airports — as the threat of a full-scale invasion loomed.
Volodymyr Smus, head of Antonov Airport’s control and dispatch centre, says the ‘Mriya’ was not moved because the airport didn’t want to risk the safety of the pilots.
Ashleigh Stewart
But it wasn’t, Smus says, because Antonov staff didn’t believe it would happen.
“We were not prepared for war. The airfield was preparing for the reception of Boeing and Antonov planes,” Smus says.
“Missile strikes on the territory of the airfield were considered at planning meetings. But [not] a full-scale invasion.”
Antonov was likely taking its lead from the Ukrainian government. In early 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was busy downplaying the threat of an invasion and criticizing countries for pulling their embassies out of Ukraine, despite Russian troops amassing on the Belarusian border.
During a secret trip to Kyiv in January 2022, CIA Director William Burns again urged Zelenskyy to take the threat of war seriously. He warned of specific details of the plan, including that Antonov Airport would be targeted as a staging area for the assault on Kyiv.
Zelenskyy remained skeptical. But the military went into planning mode.
“It was already clear at the beginning of February,” says Col. Oleksandr Vdovychenko, commander of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade, a crucial component in the defence of Kyiv.
“Valery Zaluzhnyi made a decision and units of the brigades began to advance in the direction of Kyiv at night. Before that, we made all the calculations and understood who would occupy the defence where.”
Col. Oleksandr Vdovychenko, commander of the 72nd Mechanized Brigade.
Supplied
Zaluzhnyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, transformed the Ukrainian military into a modern fighting force after he took the top job in July 2021. He ordered command posts moved into the field towards the probable axis of a Russian advance. Artillery was set in defensive positions outside the capital. Tactical groups were sent to meet enemy forces from their suspected entry points.
But no one noticed because it was all done under the cover of darkness, Vdovychenko says. They didn’t want to alarm the public.
But even with preparations in place, the sheer number of advancing Russian troops — analysts suggest Russia was at a 12:1 force ratio advantage north of Kyiv — caught the Ukrainians unaware. So, too did their entry points.
An attack force from Russia advanced from Belarus along the west bank of the Dnipro River, supported by two axes of attack at Chernihiv, in Ukraine’s north, and Sumy, in the east. The Ukrainians were overwhelmed, Vdovychenko says, and convoys met “little resistance.”
Russian troops advanced on Kyiv from three main directions in the early days of the war.
Global News
As missiles rained down on the country, Ukrainians jumped in their cars to flee. Traffic jams snarled for kilometres, heading west of Kyiv.
Smus and his deputy finally arrived to work at about 9 a.m. A trip that would usually take 15 minutes took more than an hour. Staff were in crisis mode, deciding what to do with the fleet — namely, the Mriya, a monumental source of pride for the country, which was now a sitting duck. They discussed flying it to Germany immediately, to get it out of harm’s way, but didn’t want to risk the safety of the pilots if it was shot down.
The decision was made to leave it where it was, in its gargantuan hangar, and to move the rest of the aircraft and equipment to different areas of the airport so it wouldn’t all be destroyed in one go.
Antonov staff scurried around the airfield, preparing for the onslaught, knowing they too were in the eye of the storm.
Another hour of relative calm passed. Then came the whirring of the helicopter blades.
“We didn’t see them because they flew so low to the ground,” Rudenko recalls. “We saw them when they came above the trees and they started shooting at the airport.”
“I probably didn’t believe until the last moment that this was possible, that a full-scale offensive was possible, but after the first group of helicopters, I understood that it had really begun.”
They came from Belarus — a video from Russian state media shows helicopters being loaded up at an airfield near Mazyr, near the Ukrainian border. Rudenko estimates there were between 30 to 40 in total, led by a Mi-24 helicopter, known as a ‘flying tank’ for transporting troops, followed by about 30 Mi-8 multipurpose helicopters and tailed by a K-52 Alligator, considered the deadliest chopper Russia has ever produced.
Ukraine braces for battle as Russia unleashes attack
Dozens of airport employees were still on-site. As the Russians opened fire, they ran for cover. About 80 employees, including Smus, managed to make it to the bomb shelter under the cafeteria. Others hid in the sewers.
Rudenko and his troops aimed at the sky.
“When we received the shelling from the helicopters I gave the order to fire back. We were trying to shoot down the helicopters.”
They shot down about six, Rudenko claims, with a combination of surface-to-air missiles — man-portable air defence systems (MANPADS) — and small-arms fire. Two more were damaged and had to make an emergency landing. One Ka-52 was recorded crashing into the Dnieper River.
A Ukrainian soldier examines fragments of a Russian military helicopter near Makariv, near Kyiv, Ukraine. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky).
EL
But with such a small number of troops on the ground, Rudenko knew he was in trouble as soon as the paratroopers hit the tarmac.
“I started to receive information over the radio that the paratroopers were landing,” Rudenko says. “We didn’t know where, and on which side, so I jumped in an armoured vehicle to go to the runway to see. (As I drove) my vehicle was under machine gun fire.”
A video on Russian state media, reportedly of the opening moments of the assault on Hostomel, shows troops pouring out of transport helicopters at about 1:20 p.m. and rushing into a thicket of trees, as a plume of black smoke rose into the sky.
Meanwhile, in the bomb shelter underneath the airport, Smus and the airport staff were trying to figure out what was going on above them. They came up for air at regular intervals to try to see if an escape might be possible.
Smoke rises near the town of Hostomel and Antonov Airport on February 24, 2022. (Photo by DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty Images).
Getty Images
At some point in the afternoon, Smus says, they went outside and came face-to-face with a group of Russian soldiers.
The men told them they needed to leave the airport grounds. They were escorted to the entrance of the airport.
Upon reaching the gates, Smus asked to return to retrieve the wounded, of which there were about five. Two people had been killed that he knew of, including the chief of the airport’s fire department, who died in machine gun fire from a helicopter as he rushed out to extinguish blazes burning on the grounds.
The Russians relented. Smus returned in his car to evacuate an injured man and his father.
Inside, Rudenko’s troops stood their ground. But ammunition was beginning to run low. In the early afternoon, he doesn’t remember what time, Rudenko gave the order to withdraw.
World waits for Russia’s next moves as invasion intensifies
“Our enemy dominated us in the air, and they had many more paratroopers,” he says.
“To save the lives of our team, we had to retreat.”
It was a frenzied escape. Some soldiers jumped the fence that ran around the perimeter of the airport. Those close enough to vehicles commandeered them. Others sprinted away on foot.
As ground troops fled, Ukrainian artillery moved in, shelling the airport’s runways in the hopes it would prevent Russian planes from landing.
Local residents living on the airport’s periphery, seeing the mass exodus of Ukrainian soldiers, came to help. One man, Rudenko recalls, helped soldiers bury their weapons and documents, gave them a change of clothes, and then drove them to Kyiv.
“There were many stories like this.”
From the destroyed control tower, Russian soldiers could see the entire airfield.
Ashleigh Stewart
But some weren’t so lucky. Several Ukrainian troops were taken captive — Rudenko won’t say how many. Some have since returned home after prisoner-of-war exchanges, but others remain in prison in Russia.
The Russian Defence Ministry claimed that Russian forces suffered no casualties that day, and Ukraine suffered heavy losses.
But Rudenko says he didn’t lose a single man. One was injured. Russia, on the other hand, lost many, he says, because the soldiers that were captured later told him they were forced to load their bodies for evacuation. They counted 80.
At 3 p.m., the Russian state TV video showed soldiers storming the airport’s administration building and raising Russian flags above the control tower.
“Antonov Airport is captured,” the caption reads.
\’He pretended to be dead\’
Ukrainian reinforcements came swiftly.
At about 10 p.m., Dmytro — call sign “Zeus” — a serviceman with the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces, was onboard one of three Mi8 helicopters with about 50 soldiers, headed for Antonov Airport. They thought they were headed in to help defend the airfield, believing it to still be under Ukrainian control. Ukrainian officials were busy claiming they’d wrested it back from Russian hands.
Both Rudenko and Dmytro dispute that, however, saying the airport was firmly under Russian control after Feb. 24. Villagers living nearby the airport also confirmed this.
By the time the choppers landed, Dmytro was told the airport was captured and their new objective was to prevent the landing of incoming IL76 freight aircraft, carrying thousands of troops, which would have meant a quick capture of Kyiv. The Georgian Legion, a group of battle-hardened foreigners, and troops from Vdovychenko’s 72nd mechanized brigade, had also moved into Hostomel.
As troops disembarked, the choppers fired on the runway.
Dmytro — call sign “Zeus” — a serviceman with the Ukrainian Air Assault Forces, pictured in Hostomel.
Supplied.
Arriving at the airfield, soldiers sidled up to the concrete wall around its perimeter and began sending men over the top. The idea was for some soldiers to hide on airport grounds to act as spotters, sending coordinates of Russian positions to the artillery, and standing back as they were picked off, one by one.
The first Ukrainian soldier to climb over the wall was hit with a VOG-25 grenade, Dmytro says. They lost contact with him, assuming he was dead. Two others were quickly wounded. The Russians were using smoke and explosions to throw the Ukrainians off, Dmytro says, and firing at their positions.
As the smoke cleared, the Ukrainians fixed their aim and returned enough fire to provide cover for some soldiers to make it over the fence.
With the battle raging below them, the Russian IL-76s were unable to land, forcing them to turn around mid-flight and return. The fighting and artillery strikes had largely rendered the runway unusable for large aircraft to land.
Russia-Ukraine conflict: Sirens sound in Kyiv as Ukrainian forces battle Russia outside city
But by the early hours of the morning, the Ukrainians were in need of ammunition.
An order was given to retrieve the wounded and pull back slightly. Incoming Russian fire prevented the Ukrainian troops from climbing over the airport wall, so they dug under it instead. By 4 a.m., the conscious wounded were evacuated. The first soldier who scaled the wall, who’d been hit by a grenade, and several others they couldn’t contact, had to be left behind.
But the grenade never killed the first soldier.
“He survived. He came around at dawn when the enemy was trying to take his weapon. He pretended to be dead until the enemy left then got up and went to his unit,” Dmytro laughs.
From then, Dmytro’s group split into two: 30 soldiers went to ambush an incoming convoy of Russian equipment, while he and three others stayed at the airfield to act as artillery spotters.
They perched themselves in or on high buildings in the nearby village to spy on the airport grounds, Dmytro says, and “divided the airport into squares,” to provide coordinates more easily. They peered through gaps in fences. They hid in apartments on the airport periphery and stashed their weapons around the area in case they needed to move positions.
The airport was transformed into a post-apocalyptic theatre of war during weeks of fighting.
Braden Latam
There were many close calls. On one of their searches for Russian positions around Hostomel, Dmytro and his men encountered a column of 120 enemy tanks, headed for Bucha. Each fighter immediately dropped to the ground, hoping the grass, no more than 30 cm high, would camouflage them.
“The column stops, and one tank simply turns its muzzle in our direction. We just lie in the grass and think ‘Right now they will just shoot and they won’t find us,’” Dmytro says.
“The muzzle of the tank is looking at me, and for some reason, at that very moment, my phone starts ringing and my music starts playing. I try to somehow turn off the music.
“I don’t know by what miracle they just didn’t notice us and the convoy drove on and we continued to advance.”
\’Irpin was like Stalingrad\’
North of Kyiv, Ukraine was busy blowing up its own infrastructure to try to channel Russia into a massive kill zone.
Vdovychenko’s 72nd Mechanized Brigade was charged with holding the right bank of the Irpin River, the main line of defence to the west of Kyiv, facing down about 10,000 Russian troops. He won’t say how many Ukrainian soldiers there were, but says it was “many times less.”
The Ukrainians had blown up the Kozarovychi dam across the Irpin River, 30 km northeast of Hostomel, to stymie the Russian advance, Vdovychenko says. The river flooded the river’s banks and inundated the Irpin floodplain, stranding Russian troops nearby and handing Ukrainian forces a monumental advantage. Left to hastily erect pontoon bridges, Russian soldier and equipment transfer slowed and became vulnerable to artillery strikes. Some reports say Russian troops had to discard their body armour and swim across the river.
A map of the major battle sites around Kyiv, as Russia tried to advance on the capital.
Global News
Blocked by Ukrainian resistance to the south, the Russians couldn’t advance eastwards. They fanned out; trying through Bucha, and Irpin, laying siege to the towns and killing and torturing hundreds of civilians, but couldn’t break through Ukrainian defences.
Bogged down, the Russians shelled the towns beyond recognition as Ukrainian soldiers attempted to fend them off.
“Irpin was like Stalingrad,” Vdovychenko says.
Ukrainian soldiers walk next to heavily damaged residential buildings in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine.
(AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
The Russians also tried to break through nearby Makariv and Zhytomyr, inflicting widespread destruction, but Ukrainian resistance was strong, Vdovychenko says, and their logistics and offensive lines became stretched.
A week after war broke out, the Russians were still fighting in Hostomel.
Some did break through, though. After advancing through Chornobyl, some Russian forces managed to side-step a fierce defence in Ivankiv, 80 km northeast of Kyiv, and the bridge the Ukrainians had blown up over the Teteriv River, to barrel onwards to Antonov Airport.
By early March, the Russians had occupied most of Hostomel and were using the airport as a hub.
Ukrainians cross an improvised path under a destroyed bridge while fleeing Irpin. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana).
FD
After weeks of ferocious fighting, but still controlled by the Russians, the airport had been transformed into a post-apocalyptic theatre of war, strewn with the charred remnants of Russian equipment, Ukrainian plane carcasses and pockmarked with craters. Everything was destroyed, in some way — including its most prized possession.
A Russian airstrike had destroyed the Mriya, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced on Feb. 27. Days later, Russian state television celebrated by airing footage of it lying in a mangled heap in its hangar.
But not all Russians were feeling jubilant, Dmytro says. While embedded in the ruined apartment complexes near the airport, he says he frequently spoke to locals who were interacting with Russian soldiers. Many of them were disillusioned, he was told.
“We talked with a priest from one of the churches, the Orthodox Ukrainian Church, who told us that soldiers or officers came to his church and begged for forgiveness for ‘killing people without wanting to,’” Dmytro says.
“They … said that “this is not our war. We do not want to kill.’”
\’No one could say where the front line was\’
On March 6, Dmytro reported to his commander, after a routine search, that there was no longer a large accumulation of Russian equipment at the airport.
Ukrainian forces around the airport were also facing their own issues, running low on food and water and facing “critical” problems with communication — most of the mobile towers were destroyed or damaged, batteries and chargers were dead, and the Russians were jamming the internet.
They were ordered to withdraw, to try to reach the 72nd brigade, about 20 kilometres away.
But how?
They tried through Hostomel and nearby Bucha, which was by now a Russian-occupied wasteland, strewn with burnt-out equipment, corpses and being bombarded by artillery.
Soldiers walk amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, on April 3, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd).
RA
“There were snipers firing. In Bucha, we saw enemy equipment on the streets, enemies searching houses, When I contacted the leadership, I asked where we should go — what route, to which forces — they answered me something like this: ‘You were there, you know where to go,’” Dmytro says.
“The situation was changing so quickly, no one could say exactly where they were. No one could say where the front line was. They simply could not tell me where I should go out.”
After days of trying, they found a Ukrainian special operations group near Hostomel who were also trying to escape and joined forces, finding a back route through the fields, forests and plantations between Hostomel and Bucha.
Nearby, Russian troops remained mired in battle failures and flooded plains.
Some paratroopers had made it to the Ukrainian side of the Irpin River and were trying to link up with troops in Moschun, which had been captured early in the war, Vdovychenko says. Moschun was on Kyiv’s doorstep; if troops made it there en masse, the Russians had a clear run to the capital.
A large military convoy seen north of Kyiv stretches from near Antonov airport in the south to the northern end of the convoy near Prybirsk, Ukraine on Feb. 28, 2022..
But Vdovychenko’s troops, against all odds, held the line. They pushed the Russians back across the river. The infamous 65-kilometre-long Russian convoy on the outskirts of Kyiv, estimated to be holding up to 15,000 troops, snarled to a halt — stymied by Ukrainian resistance, a lack of food and fuel, maintenance issues and low morale — making it vulnerable to attack.
Over the following days, as Ukrainians pummeled the convoy with anti-tank weapons and artillery strikes, the Kremlin ordered a retreat from the north of Ukraine — including Hostomel.
Col. Oleksandr Vdovychenko says the Russians underestimated the mettle of his soldiers.
Supplied
But Vdovychenko says the victory didn’t solely come down to Russian blunders. The grit of the Ukrainian troops counted, too.
Early on, he’d prepped his troops to make decisions for themselves on the spot, not to wait for directions. He wanted them to feel empowered, to know that they could, and would, make the right call.
“We knew that we would defend Kyiv and we knew that the highest distinction that a brigade can receive is to defend the capital.
“And we kept her.”
\’They robbed, smashed and broke everything\’
Rudenko’s unit returned to Antonov Airport at the beginning of April to inspect the damage.
Most of the buildings were destroyed. The burnt-out remains of Russian equipment, mines, spent ammunition, and the odd Russian corpse, made the terrain impenetrable. No one could even walk through it, let alone drive.
“Seeing all this horror that the Russians left behind — it was difficult,” Rudenko says. “They robbed, smashed and broke everything.”
Destroyed Russian equipment on the runway at Antonov Airport.
Braden Latam
Flechettes — razor-sharp, tiny projectiles designed to twist and rip through the body, prohibited for use in civilian areas — were strewn across the runway. So were plane carcasses, riddled with bullets and shrapnel wounds. The Mriya lay in pieces, its nose torn off and crumpled to the ground, its gargantuan body pierced by bullet and shrapnel holes.
The aviation world was in mourning. Built in the 1980s to ferry the Soviet space shuttle, the Antonov AN-225 set more than 120 world records throughout its 34 years in service. It was the heaviest aircraft ever built and had the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service.
The giant plane drew crowds wherever it went.
The Antonov An-225 was the largest cargo plane in the world, and a huge source of pride for Ukrainians.
Ashleigh Stewart
Its final commercial flight on Feb. 4 attracted a crowd of 10,000 people to the small Danish airfield of Billund, according to London-based air charter company 26Aviation, which hired the plane to transport urgent COVID-19 medical supplies from China to Denmark.
The flying leviathan returned to Hostomel the next day, farewelled by thousands. It never left.
Debate raged over who was responsible for the behemoth’s demise.
Its former pilot, Dymtro Antonov, released a video on YouTube in March accusing management of failing to save it.
In October, Ukraine’s Security Service concluded that Antonov officials had not taken “all the necessary measures” to save the Mriya, despite warnings from state authorities, as well as hindering the military in the early hours of the war, preventing them from organizing anti-aircraft and ground protection of the airfield. They also accused former Antonov director general Serhiy Bychkov of smuggling conscription-age men out of the country.
But Antonov continues to argue that it did not know about the Russian offensive until the day before it began.
A company spokesperson reiterated that the plane was undergoing repair work until late on Feb. 23, but refused to comment on why it didn’t depart after, saying the matter was part of a criminal investigation.
\’The dream cannot be destroyed\’
When Global News visited Hostomel in August, accompanied by Smus and Rudenko, the Mriya’s crumpled carcass still sat under the skeletal frame of its hangar.
Antonov workers stood on ladders around it, picking off any salvageable parts. A de-mining team was sifting through a pile of debris.
An Antonov worker salvages pieces from the destroyed AN-225, to use on the next ‘Mriya.’.
Ashleigh Stewart
Dozens of destroyed planes had formed a graveyard at another end of the airport. Lying in some places on top of each other, fuselages were reduced to mounds of disintegrating metal, with scorched engines hanging from bullet-riddled wings. Not a single plane had been spared.
Men with small straw brooms swept the ground below — an almost comical sight considering the scale of damage.
Dozens of destroyed planes formed a graveyard at one end of Antonov Airport.
Ashleigh Stewart
Rudenko was pensive as he watched the crew working on the Mriya. But as he stood in front of the remains of a Russian helicopter, he couldn’t hide his pride.
“[This] makes me happy,” he grins. “We brought the second army of the world to its knees. They are many times superior to us both in technology and in strength. But they got theirs.”
Smus, however, was still visibly affected by the sight of the stricken plane and its surroundings.
Accompanying Global News up a shaky ladder into the plane’s shorn-off fuselage, Smus took a deep breath.
“It’s the first time I’m in here,” he says.
Global News, accompanied by Volodymyr Smus, enter the fuselage of the Antonov AN-225 for the first time.
Braden Latam
Employees don’t like to be photographed against the background of the destroyed Mriya, Smus explains, because they prefer to remember it whole.
“As you can see, the Mriya is destroyed,” Smus says. “But the ‘mriya’, the dream, cannot be destroyed. It can be rebuilt.”
Antonov announced in November that “design work” on the second AN-225 was already underway, at a cost of $502 million. But there’s already a second AN-225, lying half-finished in a warehouse near Kyiv — abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union. No one will say if this will be used to build the second Mriya.
“There are many negotiations on this matter, but everyone is waiting for peace,” Smus says.
Sir Richard Branson, pictured at Antonov Airport during a trip to Ukraine.
Taras Dumenko
One of those negotiations is with, apparently, Sir Richard Branson.
Branson visited Hostomel in June, during a tour of several Russian attacks. At the time, Hostomel Mayor Taras Dumenko told local media the Virgin Airlines founder had offered to help to rebuild the airport. It remains unclear if this ever happened.
A Virgin spokesperson told Global News in August that “conversations are ongoing” and “Richard is keen to find ways the international community can support in the rebuild of Mriya, and the airfield.”
When we asked again in February, we were told the situation was unchanged.
An Antonov spokesperson said there were no contractual agreements in place.
Ukraine faces a huge job rebuilding Antonov Airport and its surroundings.
Hostomel alone suffered more than 9.5 billion UAH ($258.7 million) worth of damage and more than 40 per cent of its buildings were damaged in some way. But Smus is adamant that the airfield can, and will, return to service.
On a Tuesday morning in August, just outside the airport, villagers walk by apartments with gaping holes torn through them, bricks and mortar spilling out into the street. About 50 people remain living in the pulverized complex near the airport’s entrance. Volunteers go door-to-door checking on residents.
An apartment complex near the entrance to the airport, where some local residents still live.
Ashleigh Stewart
Ukrainian soldiers wander the streets or mill about on the grass.
They’re there in case Russia tries to take the airport again, Rudenko says. He won’t say how many troops are stationed there now, but says it’s more than last February.
But it’s of little solace to local residents.
Tetiana Ostapchuk wishes they would leave. She thinks they’re making them more of a target.
“We lived through all of this occupation, leave us alone now here. I’m afraid that another rocket could land here,” she says, framed by the crumbling remains of an apartment block.
Tetiana Ostapchuk wishes Ukrainian soldiers would leave, saying she believes it’s making them more of a threat.
Ashleigh Stewart
Ostapchuk lived under occupation for 38 days. She lived in a basement, a doctor’s clinic, and then with a friend. Her son is a paramedic and treated 300 Ukrainians during the battle, and several Russians.
Many of her neighbours fled to Poland. About 40 residents were taken forcibly to Belarus, she says sadly.
“The Chechens stole everything from our apartments,” she says. “It was horrible.”
A woman named Helen walks by with a stroller, delivering food to the needy. She lived here once; she delivered her first baby a week into the occupation. While she was in the hospital, her apartment building burned to the ground.
“I’m angry,” says Helen, who did not want her last name used. “Nobody asked them to come here.”
Ostapchuk similarly berates us, the international community, for not doing more to help them.
“A lot of foreigners have come here and nothing has changed.” They need aid and new housing, immediately, she says.
As the one-year anniversary of the war draws near, many say it will pass like any other day. But everyone we spoke to acknowledged how different things might have been had Russia taken the airport as planned.
Dmytro has since recovered from a concussion and been redeployed to another area of Ukraine.
Supplied
Dmytro, who has been redeployed after treatment for a concussion sustained in Zhytomyr, 140 km west of Kyiv and another site of Russian attacks, says there was “nothing heroic” about his task.
“I have many friends who ask me how it is to kill people. I simply did not feel anything — I saw the task, saw the goal and destroyed it. It was like a challenge or a shooting-range challenge where a target goes up and you shoot at it.
“The only thing I felt was very, very cold. That’s the only thing I felt.”
Vdovychenko, on the other hand, is more sanguine.
“When the enemy retreated from Kyiv … I said that we have already won this war. The only question is when it will end and in which administrative boundaries and at what price,” he says.
“We did something incredible. The enemy did not even enter the outskirts of Kyiv. The city is alive, the city is full of life, there’s children’s laughter and this is already a victory. No matter if anyone tries to take away the glory, we are already history.”
Col. Oleksandr Vdovychenko says Ukrainians defended the capital because it was the ‘highest honour’ for a soldier.
عبد الحنان، عصر حاضر کے چارٹ بسٹرز کے پیچھے آدمی جیسے ایراڈے اور بکھرا۔، صرف ایک موسیقار ہی نہیں بلکہ ایک سافٹ ویئر انجینئر بھی ہے اور وہ ایک دوسرے کے لیے ترک کرنے کا ارادہ نہیں رکھتا ہے۔ اس کے گانوں کے ایک لفظی عنوان سے لے کر شادی اور معاشرے کے بارے میں ان کی رائے تک کہ وہ کوڈنگ اور موسیقی کے درمیان زندگی کو کس طرح منظم کرتا ہے، گلوکار نے یہ سب کچھ صاف صاف گفتگو میں بتایا۔
سے خطاب کر رہے ہیں۔ فوشیا، حنان نے اس بارے میں بات کی کہ ان کے گانوں میں صرف ایک لفظ کے اردو عنوان کیوں ہیں اور کیا یہ شعوری انتخاب ہے۔ \”ایک خاص جمالیاتی تھی جسے میں نے برقرار رکھنا تھا۔ ہر لفظ اپنے انداز میں ایک کہانی ہے اور یہی مقصد تھا۔ میں نے یہ بھی سوچا کہ اگر میری ڈسکوگرافی میں صرف ایک لفظ کا ٹائٹل ہے تو وہ میرے پروفائل پر جمالیاتی نظر آئے گا اور ساتھ ہی ان الفاظ کی قدر بھی بڑھ جائے گی۔ اگر کوئی لفظ ارادے کہے تو لوگ فوراً میرے بارے میں سوچتے ہیں۔
اس نے نہیں سوچا تھا کہ وہ اتنی جلدی مقبول ہو جائے گا لیکن آخر کار اس کا ہمیشہ ایک مقصد تھا کہ وہ اپنے گانے کے عنوانات میں مختصر لیکن معنی خیز الفاظ شامل کرے۔
کراچی میں پیدا ہونے والے حنان اپنی پرائمری تعلیم کے لیے لاہور چلے گئے اور پھر صوابی کے ٹوپی میں غلام اسحاق خان انسٹی ٹیوٹ (GIKI) جانے تک وہیں رہے۔ گریجویشن کے بعد وہ لاہور واپس آگئے اور اب ایک یورپی کمپنی میں دور سے کام کرتے ہیں۔ \”میں صبح سے شام تک کوڈنگ کر رہا ہوں اور پھر میں گٹار اٹھاتا ہوں۔ یہ وہ چیز ہے جس کے بارے میں میرے زیادہ تر پرستار نہیں جانتے،‘‘ انہوں نے کہا۔
تاہم، دونوں کو ایک ساتھ جگانا بہت زیادہ ہو جاتا ہے، خاص طور پر جب اس کی \”حقیقی\” جیت کی دستاویز نہیں کی جاتی ہے۔ \”لوگ اکثر مجھے میرے گانوں کے چارٹ میں آنے اور سپر ہٹ بننے کے بارے میں پیغام دیتے ہیں لیکن دن کے آخر میں میرے لئے اصل جیت اس کے پیچھے کا سفر ہے۔ کوئی بھی اس کو نہیں دیکھتا اور نہ ہی اسے تسلیم کرتا ہے\” اس نے انکشاف کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ اسے گریجویشن کے آٹھ ماہ بعد برلن سے نوکری کی پیشکش ہوئی اور جب وہ ویزا کے لیے درخواست دے رہا تھا اور اپنے بیگ پیک کر رہا تھا، تو اس کا موسیقی کا سفر آسمان کو چھونے لگا۔
\”یہ ایک بہت ڈرامائی صورتحال تھی۔ خاندان کی توجہ اس بات پر تھی کہ میری تعلیم سے زیادہ کیا تعلق ہے، انہوں نے یہ بھی نہیں دیکھا کہ موسیقی میں میرا کیا مستقبل ہے، اور کہیں، میں نے بھی نہیں دیکھا۔ اس لیے میں برلن کے لیے روانہ ہوا،‘‘ اس نے یاد کیا۔ لیکن جرمنی میں اس کا قیام اس کی توقع سے کم رہا اور بکھرا کی کامیابی اسے واپس لے آئی۔
\”میں اپنے پہلے سولو ٹکٹ والے ایونٹ کے لیے تین دن کے لیے واپس آیا تھا لیکن میں اس بارے میں بہت پریشان تھا کہ آیا لوگ عبدالحنان کو گاتے ہوئے دیکھنے کے لیے ٹکٹ خریدیں گے۔ یہ بک گیا تھا۔ تقریب کے بعد، میں نے ایک لڑکی کو چیختے ہوئے سنا، \’لیکن آپ کو واپس جانے کی کیا ضرورت ہے؟\’ اور اس نے مجھے سوچنے پر مجبور کیا، \”انہوں نے کہا۔
اس سے پہلے پاکستان کو اتنا گھریلو محسوس نہیں ہوا۔ لوگوں کو ایسا لگا جیسے وہ میرے لوگ ہیں،\” حنان نے یاد کیا۔ یہ کہہ کر، وہ اکثر سوچتا ہے کہ اگر اس نے کوڈنگ میں اپنا کیریئر ترک کر دیا تو یہ کیسا ہوگا۔
\”کبھی کبھی میں ایک کو دوسرے کے لیے چھوڑنے کے بارے میں سوچتا ہوں لیکن پھر میں اپنے آپ کو یاد دلاتا ہوں کہ میں نے اسے پہلے کیوں شروع کیا تھا۔ میں نے اپنے کوڈنگ کے سفر کے ساتھ ساتھ ایک انجینئر میں اتنا کچھ حاصل کیا ہے کہ میں اسے ترک نہیں کروں گا۔
اپنے سفر سے آگے بڑھتے ہوئے، میزبان نے ان سے ان کی محبت کی زندگی اور ان کے محبت کے گانوں کے پیچھے \’ارادے\’ کے بارے میں پوچھا۔ مزید براہ راست سوال سے مسکراتے ہوئے اور شرماتے ہوئے، گلوکار نے صرف اتنا کہا کہ ان کا \’ارادے\’ ایک دوسرے کے ساتھ رہنے اور بوڑھے ہونے کا احساس رکھنا ہے۔
تاہم، جبکہ حسن رحیم نے حال ہی میں انکشاف کیا ہے کہ وہ جلد ہی آباد ہونے کا ارادہ رکھتے ہیں، حنان کے دوسرے منصوبے ہیں۔ \”میں اپنے اہداف پر توجہ مرکوز کرنا چاہتا ہوں اور اپنے ارد گرد کی دنیا کو مزید دیکھنا چاہتا ہوں۔ میں مزید سفر کرنا چاہتا ہوں اور جلد ہی کسی بھی وقت شادی کرنے کا ارادہ نہیں رکھتا۔\” انہوں نے اپنے سامعین سے کہا کہ وہ ان کی رائے کو غلط نہ لیں لیکن یہ صرف ان کی پسند ہے۔
حنان کا سادہ نظریہ ہے کہ اگر کوئی مرد آزادی، عزت اور تحفظ دینے کے لیے کافی ذمہ دار اور ذہنی طور پر تیار ہے تو اسے ہی شادی کرنی چاہیے ورنہ وہ اس شخص کے لیے شادی کی سفارش نہیں کرتا۔ \”عمر اس بات کا تعین کرنے کے لیے صحیح میٹرک نہیں ہے کہ شادی کب کرنی چاہیے۔ کسی کو اپنے اہم دوسرے کی حفاظت، احترام اور آزادی دینے کے لیے ذہنی طور پر تیار رہنا چاہیے۔‘‘ انہوں نے کہا۔
دی بکھرا۔ گلوکارہ نے شیئر کیا کہ جب ان کی ماں ایک ورکنگ ویمن تھیں، انہیں اپنی زندگی میں مردوں کی طرح عزت نہیں ملی اور زندگی بھر ان کے ساتھ ہیرا پھیری ہوئی۔ \”احترام سب سے اہم چیز ہے۔ ہمیں خواتین کو جگہ دینے کی ضرورت ہے۔ شادی ایک بندھن اور ایک ساتھ سفر ہے۔ ہم کہتے ہیں کہ ہم نے خواتین کو بااختیار بنانا قبول کیا ہے لیکن ہم نے ایسا نہیں کیا۔ اس وقت بھی خواتین کام پر نہیں آتیں۔ اسے چھوڑیں، انہیں رات 10 بجے کے بعد باہر جانے کی اجازت نہیں ملتی یا ایسا کرنے سے پہلے دو بار سوچنا پڑتا ہے۔ یہ ہمارے کنسرٹس میں ہر وقت ہوتا ہے۔
اختتام پر، گلوکار نے بتایا کہ وہ اپنی زندگی میں کس قسم کی عورت کی تلاش کر رہا ہے۔ اس نے کہا کہ حنان نے لڑکی کے بارے میں سب سے پہلے جو چیز نوٹ کی وہ اس کی ڈریسنگ سینس ہے اور اس کے بعد وہ دیکھتا ہے کہ وہ کتنی سماجی طور پر بات چیت کرتی ہے۔ \”اس میں مزاح کا ایک اچھا احساس بھی شامل ہے، آپ کہہ سکتے ہیں لیکن اگر وہ گفتگو میں گرمجوشی، سکون لاتی ہے، تو یہ متاثر کن ہے اور گفتگو کو جاری رکھتا ہے۔\”
کراچی – حکومت سندھ نے جمعرات کو ملک کے جنوب مشرقی علاقے میں موسم کی تبدیلی کے درمیان تمام تعلیمی اداروں کے نئے اوقات کار پر نظر ثانی کی ہے۔
ڈائریکٹوریٹ آف انسپیکشن/رجسٹریشن آف پرائیویٹ انسٹی ٹیوشنز کی جانب سے شیئر کیے گئے ایک نوٹیفکیشن میں کہا گیا ہے کہ \”صوبے بھر میں سردی کی لہر کی شدت میں کمی کے ساتھ، سندھ کے اسکول ایجوکیشن اینڈ لٹریسی ڈیپارٹمنٹ نے فوری طور پر تعلیمی سہولیات کے سابقہ اوقات کو بحال کر دیا ہے۔\”
گزشتہ ماہ حکام نے سردی کی لہر کے پیش نظر تمام نجی اور سرکاری تعلیمی اداروں کے اوقات میں تبدیلی کی تھی جس کے بعد کلاسز آدھا گھنٹہ تاخیر سے صبح 8.30 بجے شروع ہوئیں۔
سابقہ نوٹیفکیشن اب سندھ بھر میں موسم بہار سے قبل واپس لے لیا گیا ہے۔
حال ہی میں، صوبائی حکام نے گریڈ I-III کے طلباء کو بغیر امتحانات کے پروموٹ کرنے کا بھی اعلان کیا، جبکہ کلاس IV تا VIII کے امتحانات شیڈول کے مطابق ہوں گے۔
یہ پیشرفت سٹیئرنگ کمیٹی کے اجلاس کے بعد سامنے آئی جو آج کے اوائل میں صوبائی دارالحکومت میں منعقد ہوئی۔