Eight-year-old Bogdan Chesnokov wrote to Father Frost, "Please don't give me any gifts or toys or even a Sega. Please make me well.”
Photo: Sergey Ivanov
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The Lost Letter
// Bogdan Chesnokov's leg will be amputated unless he is saved
The boy is eight years old. He has Ewing's sarcoma. It is a cancerous tumor on his left thighbone. The boy has undergone 14 rounds of chemotherapy, but the illness returns and now he needs an operation. The doctors have a simple choice. They can either amputate the leg or implant an extendable oncological endoprosthesis of the knee joint. An endoprosthesis grows along with the boy. Amputated limbs do not.
“Why are you standing on your head?”
“It's gymnastics.”
“What kind of gymnastics?”
“So my leg won't hurt.”
“Why does your leg hurt?”
“I bumped it.”
“Do you remember bumping it?”
“No.”
Bogdan Chesnokov is standing on his head in his bed in the oncological unit of the Third City Hospital in Kostroma. It really is gymnastics. The boy has been in various hospitals for the last three and a half years. I don't know if that yoga really helps Ewing's sarcoma, but if the boy did not move around and do gymnastics, his leg would have atrophied already.
His illness really did start with a bruise. Bodgan's mother, Elena Sergeevna, say that three and a half years ago, Bogdan was running around the apartment with his little sister Ksenia and bumped himself hard on a piece of furniture. At first, it was just a bruise. Then the bruise swelled. Then it turned into something that was not a bruise. His mother could not describe what happened. Bogdan doesn't remember it.
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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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“Do you remember what kind of bruise you had?”
“No.”
Elena Sergeevna says that the bruise was not the cause of the sarcoma, but its provocation.
“Probably it happened because there is high radiation in our region. No one ever had sarcoma in our family. They were all big and lived a long time. To 100,”she explained.
Three and a half years ago, when doctors in Kostroma diagnosed Bogdan with sarcoma, Elena Sergeevna worked in five positions on a state farm. She listed them. I don't know much about agriculture, but I remember that she worked as a chief agronomist and manager of the tractor parts warehouse. When her son get sick and she needed to spend more time with him, Elena Sergeevna quit her management jobs.
“I couldn't work from morning to night,” she said. “I became a mail carrier. I delivered the mail in the morning and then spent the day with my child.”
I try to tell Elena Sergeevna that it was a mistake to quit her jobs to become a mail carrier, that the government had by law to pay her for 120 days of sick leave to take care of her child. It would be better than nothing. And the higher the salary is, the higher the sick pay is. But she objected that it is not good to take money from the government without working.
A few minutes later, I learn that Elena Sergeevna quit mail delivery when they put Bogdan in the Moscow Oncological Center so she could be with her son.
“Why did you quit?” I ask. “They would have paid you sick leave.”
“We live in a village,” she replied with a shrug. “there are only three mail carriers in the post office. If I hadn't quit, the other two would have had to split my work. And they would have gotten mad. The whole state farm would have gotten mad at me because I was receiving money and others were working for me.”
The Chesnokovs had no money at all. Elena Sergeevna said that she had to separate from her husband, since she was in the hospital with her son all the time. Their younger daughter Ksenia had to be put in a shelter. Elena Sergeevna say that there is a special shelter in Kostroma for children whose brothers or sisters are being treated for cancer. That's because fathers often leave their families when their children come down with cancer.
Elena Sergeevna did not pay for her heat or light in her state farm apartment for several years and ran up huge bills by state-farm standards. She says that waited a few years and then agreed to take the apartment in exchange for the debt and give the family a hut without light or heat instead, where no debt could was possible.
Last year, her former colleagues told Elena Sergeevna that the post office was holding a contest. Children wrote to Father Frost at his official address in Veliky Ustyug. The child who wrote the best letter got a gift from Father Frost, some supertoy.
Bogdan doesn't remember it any more, but Elena Sergeevna can quote his letter from memory: “Dear Father Frost. Please don't give me any gifts or toys or even a Sega. Please make me well.”
Probably the letter got lost.
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562,000 rubles are needed to save eight-year-old Bogdan
Nadezhda Ivanova, senior researcher in the skeleton tumor department of N.N. Blokhin Research Institute, “Bogdan Chesnokov has Ewing's sarcoma on his left thighbone. That is a very rare pathology.” The was treated in his native Kostroma a year ago and transferred to the Moscow hospital when he had a relapse. In Moscow, a “pronounced positive effect” was attained.
Now the boy is in Kostroma being given a course of chemotherapy in the Third City Hospital. It is maintenance therapy, Ivanova explains. “The tumor is no longer palpable, which is very good, but it is still there in the bone. In such cases, the bone has to be removed completely and replaced with a prosthesis.” The tumor is small enough that Bogdan can be operated on and an endoprosthesis implanted.
The Chesnokovs have a choice. A free prosthesis is possible. But it is unreliable and, worse, as the child grows, the prosthesis has to be extended, with an operation on the leg every time. Those operations have to be done at least once a year, and twice a year if the child grows that fast.
There is a paid alternative as well. That is the extendable prosthesis from the Wright Co. of the United States that “grows” along with the child. The doctors strongly recommend it because the extension of the prosthesis occurs unnoticed by the child. “That prosthesis offers maximum dependability without any other operations,” Ivanova says. “It won't break, even in extreme circumstances like a car wreck.” Two weeks after the operation, children can walk again as though nothing happened.
The Chesnokovs, unfortunately, cannot pay for such an item. They live in a village in Kostroma Region where work is scarce. Bogdan's mother Elena Sergeevna is raising two children by herself. The endoprosthesis costs 1.08 million rubles. As always, our permanent partner the Capital Investment Group will contribute $10,000 (details at ). A reader who asks to remain unnamed has contributed another $10,000. Thus 562,000 rubles more are needed to save Bogdan. Contributions can be sent to the supplier of the prosthesis or to the Moscow savings account of Elena Sergeevna Chesnokova. The banking details can be obtained from the fund.
The expert group of the Russian Aid Fund
Valery Panyushkin
All the Article in Russian as of June 15, 2007
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