After the first chemo, the sarcoma in the girl’s leg became smaller. Now Polina can walk lamely, pushing the drip-bulb in front of her, but she feels sad anyway.
Photo: Alexey Kudenko
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Artificial Bone
// Little girl needs a prosthesis which would grow together with her
Polina Glushkova is five years old. She has sarcoma of left thighbone. After four chemotherapy courses, doctors will cut out the sarcoma together with the bone, remove the coxofemoral joint and the knee-cap, replacing them with an endoprosthesis, or an artificial bone. These bones can be expensive or cheap. The expensive ones grow together with a child. If a cheap endoprosthesis is installed, it will be necessary to expand it, performing surgery on a child’s leg once a year.
Polina keeps silence. It’s not that she can’t talk. She is just sad. After the first chemo, the sarcoma in the girl’s leg became smaller. Now Polina can walk lamely, pushing the drip-bulb in front of her, but she feels sad anyway.
We are sitting on a couch in the hall of the Blokhin Oncology Center. Polina’s mother is telling me that they were buying a new year dress for the girl, and Polina complained of pain in the leg. In a couple of days, she jumped down from a footstool and said that her leg hurts even stronger than her fingers used to hurt after she had burned them by touching an iron. Polina is sitting silently. I take her by the hand. There is a scorch on her fingers, but it’s just a scorch. And her swollen knee has osteosarcoma, or bone cancer.
Polina doesn’t want to talk to me. She looks either into the window, or the TV at which older children are playing a videogame. So, I take up a small teddy-bear, and sit a pink-dressed doll next to Polina. Then I speak to the doll in bear’s voice:
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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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“Hi, what’s your name?”
“I’m Tanya,” says Polina in doll’s voice, smiling for the first time.
I’m trying to be a funny bear. I say that bears are very good at climbing trees, and that the pole of Polina’s drip-bulb is a tree.
“Do you know why bears climb up trees?” asks the teddy-bear.
“No. Why?”
If dolls could shrug their shoulders, that’s what Polina’s doll would do.
“Because,” the bear is climbing up the ‘tree’, “wild bees live on trees, they make very good honey, and bears climb up to get the honey.”
I’m trying to make the teddy-bear climb up in a funny manner. I’m holding the toy so as to make it move its front paws with my thumb and my middle finger, its back paws – with the ring finger and the little finger, and its head – with my index finger. Polina laughs and claps her hands. The bear climbs up to the very top of the pole, hugs the bottle with the medicine, and says dreamily:
“Honey!”
“No-no,” cries Polina. “That’s not honey, it’s bitter medicine. The honey is in the tree’s cavity.”
The girl stands up and shows the cavity to the teddy-bear, pointing at the plastic screw which fixates the pole of the drip-bulb. The bear licks the screw and munches, while Polina is touching her mother’s hand, saying:
“Look, he’s eating, he’s eating honey!”
Having had enough honey, the bear asks the doll:
“Do you know that girl?” he points his paw at Polina.
“It’s Polina,” replies the doll. “She’s my friend. She is ill.”
“Are you badly ill?” the bear asks Polina.
“Not badly,” says the girl, “but I’ll have a surgery.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I’ll be sleeping.”
“Right. Don’t be afraid. I had a surgery too, and it’s OK.”
There is a small patch on the bear’s paw, and another one on his chest. So the bear says that he has a patch on his paw because doctors removed an osteosarcoma, and the patch on his chest covers the spot where he had chemotherapy catheter, just like Polina did. The girl smiles. As a sign of gratitude, she takes a glittery flower off the doll’s dress, and puts it carefully onto the bear’s chest.
“What’s that?” asks the bear. “A jewel?”
“No,” says Polina. “I’m giving you a heart.”
“A heart? For me?” the bear is overwhelmed.
“Yes,” says Polina. “A golden heart.”
Polina is to undergo three more chemotherapy courses. Chemo gives children fever and nausea. Yet, the surgery is performed right after the chemo, so as to avoid metastasis. If the prosthesis is not bought by the end of the third chemo, the girl will have to undergo the fourth and the fifth chemo. And no one knows how many chemos Polina will have to have until the prosthesis is found. And nobody knows how many chemos she will be able to endure.
When I was saying goodbye to Polina, the teddy-bear promised to stay by the girl and watch over her, so that she gets better soon. Polina was smiling. She is five, and she probably doesn’t know that a teddy-bear’s efforts is not enough to cure her.
&The sum of 779,160 roubles will save Polina Glushkova from Khakasia.
Nadezhda Ivanova, leading research member of the department for locomotor apparatus sarcoma at the Blokhin Research Institute, said: “Polina Glushkova has osteosarcoma of left thighbone. The sarcoma was quite large in size.” But the girl is lucky: the bone cancer process is going on just in the thighbone, and there are no metastases. After the first two chemos, the sarcoma was reduced by half. “Polina is now having the third chemo. It will be over by March 7, and I hope for a new improvement,” said Ivanova.
Usually, in similar cases, the sarcoma becomes fit for surgery after three or four chemos. Surgeons then remove the lower part of the thighbone and the knee joint, so as to prevent the sarcoma from spreading down to the shin-bone. Polina’s doctors plan to install an expandable endoprosthesis produced by US company Wright. Nadezhda Ivanova says that Polina needs that very prosthesis, because “the girl is only five, and she will grow and grow”. There exist other expandable implants, all are produced abroad, but they have one drawback: they are expanded manually. In this case, Polina will have to undergo a new surgery every 1.5-2 years. The US prosthesis is much better, because it can be extended by 1.5-2 centimeters every time, just by putting the leg into electromagnetic field. Ivanova says it can be done by means of a VHF device in any public clinic. With this kind of endoprosthesis, Polina will be able to live a normal life, being just like other little girls.
Nadezhda Ivanova says that Polina has good chances: “We have the 87-percent survival rate among patients with osteosarcoma in the coxofemoral joint without metastases. It is the rate of the world’s best clinics. All former patients have normal lifestyle, give birth to children, drive cars.”
The US prosthesis costs 1.08 million roubles. As always, our permanent partner Ingosstrakh company will donate $11,500 (please visit www.rusfond.ru for details). Thus, 779,160 rubles is needed. Donations can be transferred to the prosthesis’ supplier or to the account of Polina’s mother Olga Glushkova in Moscow’s Sberbank. There is no chance for Olga to raise that sum on her own, she is a salesperson in a store in Khakasia, and Polina’s father left them. The banking details can be obtained in the fund.
Expert group of the Russian Fund of Help
Valery Panyushkin, specially for the Russian Fund of Help
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 02, 2007
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