Russian doctors asked Lina to come back for examination next year. The girl’s mother is afraid that it will be too late. Lina’s condition is getting worse every day.
Photo: Igor Chizhov
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Smiling In the Death’s Face
Lina Tuichieva is a tiny four-year-old girl from Saratov. She has heart disease and so many concomitant diseases that her mother says that Lina is still alive only because of her strong personality. However, things are going so bad now that Lina’s strong character will not be enough to survivie. She needs our help.
This four-year-old weights only twelve kilos. It is only her glasses and smile that look big. I learnt it later about the smile though. I came into the apartment and said: “Hi, Lina!” I did not have time to say anything else to Lina as she disappeared without a trace. She hid herself behind the door in the other room and clasped the door handle inside. “She thinks that you’ve come to make her an injection. She’s just scared. It’s funny because it seems she’s already gone through everything,” her mother, Tanyana, explains with bitterness.
While Lina is waiting behind the door, Tatyana tell me her daughter’s story. Doctors discovered an innate complex heart disease with Lina on her second day. This disease is called tetralogy of Fallot. She also has central nervous system affection and tetraparesis. When Lina was two months, her first heart attacks began. Do you know what it looked like? First she would gasp for breath. The breath would falter. Then, Lina’s lips and fingertips would get blue. Two minutes later, she would be all deep blue. She was shrieking so loud that her parents’ hair would stand on end. And it is not just a metaphor. It really happened.
At the age of five Lina went through her first surgery, at Moscow’s Bakulev Heart Disease Center. It did not work. Liquid started to accumulate near her heart. Resuscitation. Apparent death. But she survived. Four months later she went under the knife again. The surgery was a success, and attacks stopped. In August 2003, she underwent another operation – fundamental correction of the disease. Still, it was not the convalescence but just a deferment. Doctors were going to make another surgery on Lina but did not venture.
“She’s pig-headed. That’s why she’s gone through it all. If she did not have this character, she would not have survived,” Tatyana says. The doctors at the Bakulev Center say they are waiting to see Lina for a repeat examination next year. Tatyana is afraid of waiting another year. The girl’s condition is getting worse every day. Tatyana is scared of new attacks as frightful as they were in Lina’s childhood.
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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.
The Russian Aid Fund
Address: P.O. Box 50, 125252 Moscow, Russia
www.rusfond.ru
e-mail: rfp@kommersant.ru
Telephone: +7 (095) 943-9135
Telephone/fax: +7 (095) 158-6904
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Meanwhile, Lina has finally realized that I am not going to make an injection for her, and she got out. She is sitting on the carpet with her legs crossed, swinging and holding tight to a plush tiger. The girls speaks little and not confidently. Now and then she goes to kindergarten to a special group called CMR – for children with mental retardation. When she does not, Lina is ill. Chronic pneumonia has added to a bunch of other diseases. Tatyana is with her 24/7. The family lives on the father’s salary. He is a police officer.
In September, doctors told Tatyana about the Russian Aid Fund. She read a story about Lina’s peer, Dasha Klokova, on the fund’s web-site. Kommersant wrote about Dasha in March. Dasha had a similar diagnosis, and doctors did not guarantee that she would make it through summer. Readers of Kommersant helped to raise money for surgery in Germany. But Dasha has not only survived the summer. The little pale girl with purple lips has turned into a health pink-cheeked kind. Tatyana has contacted the hospital in Germany immediately. German doctors are ready to give a chance to Lina. But the chance cost over ˆ70,000, a fortune for Tatyana. That is why she has decided to write to the Russian Aid Fund.
The girl is bored with our conversation and leads us to show to her room to her favorite toys. On the way to the room, I tentatively took the girl by the hand. “I can do too!” she said firmly and went further. Yes, she has a strong personality, that’s true. Tatyana told me that if Lina wants something she can even tap a foot on the floor sometimes or bang her hand on the table. Not very strongly, but loudly. She always has things done her way.
Lina showed me two boxes of favorite toys. She took a seat and as she was looking for the most favorite toy, others were flying away. Finally, there it was there – a bird with a long beak and eye-popping purple feathering.
“Lina, who’s that?” I asked.
“It’s a peckwooder.”
“Who?”
“A peckwooder, you know,” the girl answered and looked at me as if I was dumb and started to bang the Peckwooder’s beak against the floor. This was a just a woodpecker.
Lina was apparently disappointed in me and did not let me see any other toys. She showed some mercy at the end, though, when she gave me a smile and took my hand. The only thing that this smiling girl has now got to hope for is you – and her own strong personality, of course.
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1, 279,000 Rubles Needed to Save Angelina
Angelina Tuichieva, or Lina as her parents call her has had bad luck since her birth. She has gone through a number of serious operations in her home town and in Moscow. There were successful surgeries, there was some improvement, but the doctors in Saratov do not guarantee anything without a new operation. Lina’s doctor, cardiologist Natalya Petrova says that “Angelina may die without the operation.” The girl’s conditional is stable but bad, and medical tests indicate deterioration. You can see it yourself, Petrova says. Lina’s skin is always sallow. She gets short of breath after any excitement or activity. The girl’s condition is complicated with chronic pneumonia and pyelonephritis.
Moscow doctors, however, asked the Tuichievs to come in one year’s time. This was the moment when Tatyana, Angelina’s mother read at the Russian Aid Fund’s website about the salvation of Dasha Klokova from complex heart disease. She wrote to us and to University Hospital of Aachen. This was the place where the doctors saved Dasha.
Germany has presented the same bill for the Tuichievs as they did for the Klokovs. The surgery, travel, services of an interpreters, visa and accommodation would take up ˆ75,830 or 2,592,000 rubles.
We hope that Lina will have such good luck that Dasha had. The Tuichievs have no one to hope for. Lina’s mother used to work as a newsagent and her father is a police officer. Our partners, the Kapital investment group and the Ingosstrakh investment company will make their traditional contributions of $21,000 and $11,500, respectively, which makes it ˆ25,390.
Our regular reader who would like to be left unnamed will add ˆ13,000. So, ˆ37,440, or 1,279,000 rubles is left. This is a sizeable sum of money, therefore, each ruble is will be appreciated. We have opened a ruble bank account for Lina’s mother, Tatyana Tuichieva. We are ready to provide all banking details of the hospital to those who are willing to send money in euros (no less than ˆ1,000 – a request of the German hospital).
The Russian Aid Fun expert group
Andrey Kozenko
All the Article in Russian as of Nov. 24, 2006
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