Nina Rucetzkaya was 75 years old when she came to the Beit Baruch Assisted Living Facility for the Elderly. She married Yozef Braginsky, one of the other residents. Several years ago she developed a strong pain in her hip that grew worse and worse and no doctors or treatment could help her. She became bedridden and completely dependent on others to function for over a year. That changed in November 2004 when JCRC sent Dr. Lew Lipsitz, a geriatric physician in Boston to Dnep for a sabbatical with his wife Louise. Lew found that a big problem with elderly in our community is breaking their hips—it is the end of their life in one way or another. Lew found a local surgeon, Dr. Loscutov, and developed a program with the support of Boston so that Jewish elderly could receive hip replacement surgery. Although she did not believe him, Lew told Nina she would walk again on that one condition that she would give him the first dance when she could walk again.

Nina had her hip replacement in December 2004, the first of 26 successful surgeries that Dr. Loscutov has performed to date. After a few weeks she started to walk on her own and now she still uses the exercise equipment donated by Louise and Lew Lipsitz and Doris and Bob Gordon. She has only one problem now—to keep her promise to have her first dance (which is no longer the first because she dances all the time!) with Dr. Lew Lipsitz!

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