Confusion, chaos, then excruciating pain — Nya Hla Gue vividly remembers the day her village in rural Myanmar was rocked by an air strike.
Air force jets sent by the country's military rulers to target resistance fighters in ethnic areas had attacked in her region of Bago before.
But this strike was close. Terrifyingly close.
"We started to run and flee. Everyone was running," the 62-year old told the ABC.
"Then someone ran into me and I fell and broke my hip."
She was desperate to get away but could not get up.
Soon, other villagers helped her into the jungle, where they hid in fear for the next 15 days.
Nya Hla Gue then spent the next two weeks being carried by hammock, motorbike, car and boat across the border into Thailand.
She had no pain medication for that entire month.
"My hip was so painful, but I still had to flee from place to place," Nya Hla Gue recalled.
The Myanmar that Nya Hla Gue fled has been in a downward spiral since the military seized power from the country's elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, two years ago.
Human rights groups report that the military's violent crackdown on opponents to its coup has led to more than 2,800 deaths, more than 17,000 arrests, 1.5 million people displaced and thousands of injuries.
Number of patients treated the 'tip of the iceberg'
Over the past two years under the junta's control, Myanmar's already fragile health care system has been crumbling, especially in rural areas where medical supplies are scarce.
In the cities, many people are too scared to go to the junta's hospitals and private hospitals are expensive.
Doctors and nurses who treat people at underground clinics risk arrest or assault, and many have been forced to flee.
The Thai border town of Mae Sot has historically been one of the main places that the country's people have fled in times of crisis and, since the February 2021 coup, it has been a more-important haven than ever.
A month after she broke her hip, Nya Hla Gue finally made it across the border.
Now, she has medication, a wheelchair and surgery scheduled and paid for at Mae Sot Hospital.
It's all thanks to a charity in the town run by Australian-Thai nurse, Kanchana Thornton.
"I am so thankful for the support. I will never forget it," Nya Hla Gue said.
Ms Thornton and her small team at the Burma Children Medical Fund (BCMF) began organising and funding medical treatment for children in the border area in 2004.
The Thai government gave BCMF permission to help Burmese children who came across the border needing complex medical care, if it also helped local Thai children whose families could not afford treatment.
A few years later, the team branched out to assist adults as well, and since the Myanmar coup, it has only been getting busier.
"We're only touching the tip of the iceberg," Ms Thornton told the ABC.
"Of all the problems that are inside [Myanmar] — we're only able to see the ones that come across the border.
"There are many more people [who] desperately need help and need medical care and need food. It's devastating."
From Sydney to Mae Sot
Ms Thornton was born in Thailand, but moved to Sydney at age 14 to live with an aunt, so that she could get what her parents believed would be a better education.
She barely spoke English on her first day of high school in March 1980.
After studying nursing at the University of Technology Sydney, Ms Thornton went on to work at the Royal North Shore Hospital and the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPA).
She became an Australian citizen, but always felt a pull to do nursing work in her native Thailand.
"The nursing association in Thailand thought I was mad," Ms Thornton said.
"[They said] 'Why would you come back? Do you know how [little] you would get paid here compared to Australia? It would be nothing.'"
Undeterred, Ms Thornton did some volunteer work at the well-known Mae Tao Clinic in Mae Sot while on holidays in Thailand in 2000, with her journalist husband Phil.
The next year she returned to do a one-year placement at the clinic through the Australian Volunteers International program.
One year turned into 10 years.
The work was rewarding but heartbreaking. Sometimes the patients' medical needs were far greater than what the clinic or local Mae Sot Hospital could provide.
"Because of my background, from what I learned Australia, I knew that if you have a good health care system you can get things fixed and treated and children can have a future," Ms Thornton said.
"So I decided to start to work out how I could send them to Chiang Mai, to get treated for the conditions that they were suffering from."
In the beginning, she worked with two expatriate doctors who fundraised to pay for the patient transfers and treatments.
However, when the doctors returned to their home countries, it was all on her.
"[My husband] Phil found out later I used some of our savings to treat these patients," she said.
"But [I thought], 'We can't stop now. We need to keep going since we know that we can get treatment.'"
A Rotary Club in Thailand started funding treatment, case by case. Then, over time, she managed to source regular donations from people and organisations, mostly in Thailand, Australia and the United States.
At first, she would hire a van or ambulance once a month to transfer patients from Mae Sot to larger hospitals in Bangkok or Chiang Mai.
These days there can be up to six journeys a month.
BCMF covers the costs of surgery and follow-up care for a range of medical conditions. They treat about 300 to 400 people each year.
The team also sources wheelchairs and mobility devices, offers eye screening and gynaecological referrals, and makes prosthetics.
Since the coup, people with war wounds are coming for help, too.
"Our mission is health care for all," Ms Thornton said.
"You get shrapnel injuries. You get an landmine injuries. You get people falling and breaking legs because [they have run from] air strikes, and then we have all the pre-existing [medical] conditions too."
Demand for 3D printed prosthetics rising
As Ms Thornton and Nya Hla Gue discussed a plan to go to Mae Sot for surgery on her broken hip, other BCMF team members were working hard on the opposite side of the room.
They were shaping and sanding prosthetic arms and hands, that have been made by four donated 3D printers whirring away on the bench behind them.
In 2019, BCMF began printing them for local people with congenital birth defects, or those who had lost limbs from disease or old landmine explosions.
The post-coup violence in Myanmar means the team is printing more prosthetics than ever.
They have just ordered two more printers to keep up with demand.
Aung Kyaw Thu* went to the BCMF's workshop to be fitted for a prosthetic for his left arm.
In the days after the military coup, the 36-year-old took to the streets of Myanmar's biggest city, Yangon, with thousands of other people to demand the junta release Aung San Suu Kyi and restore democracy.
As the rallies grew and the junta began violently cracking down on protesters, he discovered a warrant was out for his arrest so he fled to the mountains to stay with a relative.
He began volunteering by delivering food and supplies to other people who had also been forced to flee.
"One day, we were driving in a vehicle to a village and a heavy weapon dropped in front of us and exploded," Aung Kyaw Thu told the ABC.
"I felt heat on my arm, I'd never had that kind of feeling before, and then I saw I lost my hand."
With next to no medical treatment available where he was, Aung Kyaw Thu began the perilous journey across the border to Mae Sot.
A local hospital was able to operate on his left arm and save it from the elbow up. Then BCMF made him a 3D printed prosthetic.
"I never expected to receive a prosthetic arm. I can't express my gratitude," Aung Kyaw Thu said.
He now wants to return to his strife-torn country, to continue doing his part for the resistance movement.
"Luckily I'm still alive and I can continue with the revolution," he said.
Nya Hla Gue wants to return to Myanmar one day too but, while the military junta is in charge, she believes she is much safer in Thailand.
Once she has recovered from hip surgery, the BCMF team have also arranged for her to have cataract surgery on her eyes.
Ms Thornton said she wished she had the resources to help even more people, but added that, ultimately, the international community needed to step up and do something to remove the military regime.
"I think there needs to be more action happening rather than just meeting and talking, because is a humanitarian crisis and it's been two years now," she said.
* Some names in this story have been changed for safety and security reasons.
