Contributor
Juan Lopez Tiboni
Juan is an Argentinian-born, Canadian-raised Internal Medicine specialist and humanitarian doctor. He’s worked on global projects from Uganda to Afghanistan, with a focus on point-of-care ultrasound (POCUS) in resource-limited settings. Juan is involved with organisations like Floating Doctors, World Extreme Medicine Fund, and Health Volunteers Overseas, and shares his experiences at humanitarianmedicjournals.com.
From the World Extreme Medicine Fund Team
When we deploy teams into complex environments, we know that the work we do leaves an imprint, not just on those we support, but on our volunteers themselves.
This powerful reflection from Juan Lopez Tiboni captures what it’s really like to serve on a WEMF mission: the fear, the uncertainty, the humanity that threads through every moment.
In February 2025, Juan joined our Ukraine deployment to help train civilians near the front line in lifesaving skills. His words remind us that behind every bandage handed out or IFAK delivered, there are people, real lives, real stories, and real stakes.
We’re grateful to Juan for sharing his story so candidly, and to every member of our volunteer community who continues to step forward, no matter how heavy the task.
“F**k,” I thought. “How am I going to tell my mum?”
That was the first thing that crossed my mind as I closed my laptop and took a breath.
Sooner or later, I knew this moment would come. If I really wanted to understand and make an impact in the humanitarian space, the highest needs are in the heart of darkness – the places nobody wants to go: famine, disaster, drought.
War.
“What the hell am I doing?” came next.
Right… I’d just agreed to go to Ukraine.
That night, I had a bad dream.
I was standing in Ukraine under a blue sky. I heard screaming and looked up to see dots in the sky getting larger, heading toward me. With my head craned back, I watched them fan out and lunged to my right, then my left, side-stepping detonations that rang my bell. Then, an explosion at my back sent me spinning through the air in slow motion. I landed flat, like a board, and woke up in a cold sweat.
Sometime in 2024, I filled out an online application with a well-respected NGO delivering medical services near the front line. Like so many emails I’d sent that year with no reply, I had nearly forgotten about it entirely, until a message landed in my inbox two weeks into my attachment in Nepal in January 2025.
“It’s a short-term training project for civilians near the front lines to better equip them to handle or act in the case of drone strikes or artillery blasts,” the email read.
I sat on the email for a few days before responding. The dates lined up with a gap in my calendar. I’d been carrying the banner for humanitarian work for long enough, and this was the real deal. Now was my chance to put up or shut up.
Truth is, I was terrified.
Terrified of entering a conflict zone for the first time.
Terrified to be working with a new team I’d never met before.
Terrified of the unpredictability of modern warfare – drone strikes, glide bombs, ballistic missiles that you could never see coming, no matter how low the odds that one would land on my head.
But above all, I was terrified of what my family would think if something happened to me.
I didn’t know how to tell them.
I thought of the heartbreak of losing a son too soon, because he went somewhere he maybe had no business being. When the possibility of entering Gaza came up last year during preparations for a project in Jordan, it sparked an argument every time. I didn’t have the headspace for another fight I knew wouldn’t change my mind.
Firefighters run towards the fire. I see my line of work the same way. That involves risk. So be it. I just try my best not to be reckless – and to keep my eyes wide open.
For the two weeks leading up to deployment, I was in a constant state of anxiety. I coped by reminding myself that my perceived risk and actual risk were different: one shaped by fear, the other shaped by facts. The last casualty in our area had occurred months before. Even when the city’s power grid went down after a drone strike at the power plant two days before our arrival, I kept telling myself the odds were low.
Soon enough, I found myself sleeping in a bomb shelter and eating borscht three times a day in Mykolaiv—a coastal city in southern Ukraine, about 30 kilometres from the front lines at the Kherson River.
Our team of five; two paramedics, two emergency nurses, and me, spent a week delivering personal aid kits and training 130 tram drivers in how to respond to the same kinds of explosions I’d been ducking in my dreams.
If anything, my biggest takeaway was how normal everything felt.
I didn’t come face to face with trauma wounds or emergency cases during my week there. The billboards between towns advertised sales at JYSK and new TV dramas. We ate in restaurants, served by young men pouring pints. In the evenings, we passed open shopping centres to the sound of air-raid sirens in the distance. The occasional loud pop could almost be ignored, everyone else carried on as if nothing had happened.
It didn’t align with the fact that men and women were still bleeding into the soil just 30 clicks to the east.
Although the trip itself was benign, my experience wasn’t.
The chaos wasn’t in the streets. It was in my chest.
I learned to make friends with that anxiety. It was there to keep me alive. In-country, I was on high alert – eyes wide like an owl. I deactivated my phone crossing the border and kept it that way until we exited. No distractions. No doomscrolling. I was probably the most present I’ve ever been in my life.
Grounded in my surroundings. Hyper-aware. Nowhere else.
I wasn’t thinking about finances, family drama, or ex-girlfriends. It was, dare I say, liberating.
“War is a drug,” as the quote goes.
That level of vigilance is exhausting. Even in the absence of bombs at your doorstep, the psychological toll of drone warfare robs people of something deeply human: peace of mind.
But eventually, life adapts. Just like our COVID caution faded, people here learned to live beyond the threat.
“It’s been three years now,” our translator said, as a siren wailed in the distance. “We have to keep on living. The shelling was far worse when the front line was here.”
She was right.
Once you get used to the sirens, it’s easy to forget there’s a war at all, until you see the painted-over scars of cluster bombs near the main square.
There were other moments that moved me, unexpectedly.
One evening, sitting in a restaurant watching young men eat ribs and drink beer, I found myself wondering how I’d feel seeing that if I were Ukrainian. I’m 30. My brother is 32. If the cards were dealt differently, we could’ve been drafted.
Would I be angry at those living unbothered while others fight?
Would I be happy that someone still gets to enjoy life, making the sacrifice worthwhile?
I don’t know.
And I don’t know what I’d do if the shoe were on the other foot. Would I volunteer to fight? Would I freeze?
I’d be scared stiff.
I guess the real theme of my deployment is that I felt things I wasn’t expecting, most of them internal. It taught me that not all marks of war are visible.
“So many women tram drivers,” I said on the first or second day of training.
“You see, the men have gone to fight,” our local contact replied. “There’s now a state-run programme to train women to drive. The ones you see here are all part of that.”
A hard truth for many of us to grasp.
On the final day of training, one woman lingered after the session. She had been incredibly engaged, packing fake wounds, applying tourniquets with focus and intent. She was probably in her 50s, with coarse black hair, a weathered face, and piercing eyes.
She didn’t speak English, but I could tell she wanted to say something.
When our translator joined us, she spoke:
“She’s very thankful for this training,” the translator said. “Especially because her husband died fighting, and she cared for his wounds before he passed.”
Imagine.
I thought of how many thousands of stories like hers are out there. I wondered if she drank beer and ate ribs like the lads in the restaurant.
In the weeks after returning home, the anxiety faded, replaced by a new kind of discomfort.
I’d open my phone and see headlines about politicians arguing, while people were still dying. It all felt like men in suits playing chess with human lives.
That’s war now.
Gone are the days of Alexander storming the Persian front lines.
The heart of darkness now gives orders through a satellite phone.
The horror.
I’m not interested in saying who’s right or wrong. That’s not for me. Even so, I sometimes ask myself why I do any of this. I run on a hamster wheel, seeing patients and writing journals, like that alone will stop the bombs from falling or stop migrants from drowning.
I hide behind neutrality.
As a humanitarian doctor, my mission is to alleviate suffering and empower the vulnerable. Nothing more.
Did I achieve that in Ukraine?
I don’t pretend I did.
I went in, trained some people, and got out.
The ones who stay behind – who keep living, who drive trams every day – carry the real weight.
They’re the ones holding the bandages.
And praying they never need to use them.
A note from the team at WEM Fund
We’d like to thank Juan for sharing his experience so openly, and for his commitment to this important work.
To all of our WEMF volunteers past and present: thank you. Your time, expertise, and compassion are what make this work possible.
We are proud to stand alongside you.
WEMF operates as a restricted fund under Humanitas (UK Registered Charity Number 1114639)
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