Vladik is eight years old. He doesn’t understand what is wrong with him. He is telling the truth – he has only 1 kidney. The boy does not understand that his only remaining kidney was 15 percent alive a year ago, but now it died as well. Vladik speaks of changing the kidney as lightly as if he were to change a shirt.
Photo: Alexander Miridonov
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Something Human
// Vladik Letuev needs kidney transplantation
Vladik Letuev would have acquired chronic kidney disease sooner or later anyway. If the decease had been discovered while he was still a baby, and if he had been operated then, the boy would have lived without any trouble till about 20 years. Reaching the age of 20, he would have needed kidney transplantation anyway, however. Perhaps, transplantology would have become better developed in Russia by that time. Yet, the boy is eight now. And he needs kidney transplantation right now.
Vladik and I are walking down the hallway of the Russian Children’s Clinical Hospital. These hallways are like a labyrinth to me. I have already lost my way, but Vladik is walking confidently by my side and telling me that the first thing he found out was where different shops are located in the hospital.
-- What is located? – I ask him back.
-- Well, the shops. Different stores, cafes, stalls. I go to school 3 mornings a week, and buy something on my way back. Like a cake, or a Coca-Cola, or chewing gum. And when I finish eating all this, I go to my ward to take rest.
-- But are you allowed to eat all those tasty things which are bad for one’s health? – I ask.
-- Surely, I am! – the boy says lightly. – I feel very well.
-- Then why are you in the hospital if you feel well?
-- I need a new kidney.
-- What for? – I ask.
-- Well, the kidney I have is already old.
-- A man has two kidneys, doesn’t he?
-- No, I have just one. And it’s already old. It’s necessary to change it to a new one, because it’s too old already.
The boy is eight. He doesn’t understand what is wrong with him. He is telling the truth – he has only 1 kidney indeed. The other kidney was extirpated, because it died. Vladik does not understand that he feels well because he is on peritoneal dialysis now. He does not realize that his only remaining kidney was 15 percent alive a year ago, but now it died as well. Vladik speaks of changing the kidney as lightly as if he were to change a shirt. He thinks that all children become so tired that they need to lie down and rest after going to a couple of lessons and a chewing gum stall. He does not notice that other children’s faces are pink, while his own is yellowish. He must be seldom looking in the mirror. Vladik proudly shows a hemodialysis device standing on his bed-side table. He does not understand this devices lives instead of himself.
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For those who are encountering the Russian Aid Fund for the first time
The Russian Aid Fund was founded in 1996 to assistant the authors of desperate letters sent to Kommersant. We verify the letters with the help of local authorities, then publish the letters in Kommersant, Domovoi magazine and on the site www.rusfond.ru. If you decide to help, you will receive the banking details of the authors of the letters, and the rest is up to you. You just help you help. This approach has been popular with our readers. More than $8.4 million has been collected. We also organize relief efforts during national catastrophes, for 53 families of the miners who died in the Zyryanovskaya Mine in Kuzbass, 57 families of the policemen who burned to death in Samara, 153 families of the victims of explosions in Moscow and Volgodonsk, 118 families of the sailors who died on the submarine Kursk, 52 families of the hostages who died in the seizure of the performance of Nord Ost, 39 families of those who died in the Moscow Metro on February 6, 2004, 100 families who suffered losses in Beslan. The Fund is the winner of the Silver Archer award.
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www.rusfond.ru
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Vladik’s mother lets him go to school and shops alone. She says that every time her boy leaves the ward, she is imagining him as a healthy child. When the boy is away to school, his mother imagines him as walking down the hallways having pink cheeks and not getting tired of walking. And then she imagines that he’ll buy himself a cake and a coke, open the door, and she’ll see his pink cheeks. And suddenly all those medical tests, hospitals, surgeries will turn out to be just a nightmare. She imagines that they’ll make blood tests, make sure that her son’s illness was just a bad dream, and then they’ll go home to St. Pete. The ward’s door opens, Vladik and I enter, he has yellowish face, and his illness is not just a bad dream. And his mother is crying. She cries every time when she sees her son. She still can’t believe in their misfortune. And if she closes her eyes and imagines Vladik, she will imagine him healthy.
The doctor says that kidney transplantation is 99.9 percent likely to be successful. The doctor says that if there is a kidney and medicine for the rehabilitation period, the boy will most probably survive, and become practically healthy, and will live a normal life.
Yet, it is hard to find a kidney, because after those idiotic and pseudo-documental TV horror stories about transplantology, emergency doctors are afraid to let transplantology doctors to take organs from dead bodies. The Prosecutor General’s Office prohibited to take kidneys from dead bodies in Moscow region. The Office considered taking donor organs illegal, on the grounds that the law permits to take donor organs in “state hospitals”, while the hospitals of Moscow region are municipal, and not state. The doctor says he did 39 transplantations in 2004, 33 in 2005, and only 17 in 2006 – due to that horror-story TV scandal about transplantology. Yet, the doctor hopes the kidney for Vladik will be found. Perhaps in Volgograd, or in St. Petersburg, or in the Burdenko army hospital, because the anti-transplantologic nonsense of TV reporters does not apply to army medicine.
-- May I go play? – interferes Vladik, who apparently got bored listening to our adult conversation.
-- What game will you play? – I ask.
-- I’ll play bingo for money. I’ll win a lot of money.
Vladik shows a little box with coins which he won from older boys.
He understands that he needs money to escape from the hospital sooner. The money is needed for the post-transplantation period, for the medicine which will prevent the boy’s organism from rejecting donor kidney. For the antithymocyte globulin. The state provides children with antithymocyte globulin. But it is horse antithymocyte globulin. And Vladik needs the human one.
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To save Vladik Letuev, 778,985 rubles are needed.
Head of transplantology department at the Russian Children’s Clinical Hospital (RDKB) Alexey Valov told us that “Vladik has the congenital anomaly of urinary tracts and chronic kidney disease”. Two months ago Vladik was hospitalized in RDKB “in the extremely bad condition: neither of his kidneys was working, there were heavy hydrops”. The boy’s left kidney was extirpated because of “the obvious inflammatory process” going on there. The boy’s condition is stable now. He is going through peritoneal dialysis now: solution liquids flow into abdominal cavity through catheters. Doctors believe this type of dialysis is preferable for children.
Vladik urgently needs another person’s kidney. It’s clear to everyone, including the boy’s parents. The donor should be a dead body. Without the kidney, the boy is doomed for a life on dialysis. Donor’s kidney usually lives up to 25 years in the recipient. A whole quarter of a century of normal life.
In the last 5 years, Doctor Valov’s department transplanted 150 kidneys from dead donors. Only 9 of them were repeated transplantations. “And we lost 3 children out of 150,” says Alexey Valov. Waiting for the donor is usually no more than 6 months. The donor is usually found within 3 or 4 months.
The transplantation itself is free. But it is useless without pre- and post-transplantation special therapy (it includes 7 types of medicine). The therapy will cost 1,061,330 rubles. RDKB does not have that medicine, and the boy’s parents do not have such sums of money. Vladik’s father is a doctor, head of reanimation department in the maternity hospital #6 of Saint-Petersburg. As always, our permanent partner Kapital investment group will donate $10,500 (go to www.rusfond.ru for details). So, 778,985 rubles are needed to save Vladik Letuev. We chose medicine supplier in Moscow with reasonable prices. This is a trustworthy supplier who has already dealt with our fund. The supplier will appreciate any donations, regardless of their size. This is precisely the case when each ruble is needed.
Account details of the supplier are in our fund.
Expert group of the Russian Fund of Help
Valery Panyushkin
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 13, 2006
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