Frequently Asked Questions
// Serezha Chaikin needs bone marrow transplantation
Serezha is 1 year and 1 month old. He has acute myelogenous leucosis with M5 label, which means that leucosis is not easily curable. Chemotherapy which the boy underwent in his native city of Murmansk did not help. So, it is necessary to find a non-relative donor and to transplant bone marrow. Donor search costs more than everything the boy’s family has.
Serezha is sleeping. His mother Irina and I are standing near his bed, waiting for the boy to wake up. A perplexed and frightened expression in her eyes is magnified by the lenses of her glasses. Meanwhile, the boy is sleeping. It is quite scary the way little children sleep. As if not sure yet whether it is necessary to breathe incessantly, Serezha takes several breaths and then stops and skips several breaths, making me want to awake him by shouting “Serezha, wake up!”.
We are talking in a whisper, and when the boy skips another breath, his mother stops talking. She is telling me that Serezha had an enteric disorder in summer, and was taken to a hospital in Murmansk. His blood was taken for analysis there, and blast cells were found in his blood.
“What is it, blast cells?” Irina asked the doctor. All parents ask that question, but no one gets the reply. It is unnecessary to know what blasts are. It is important to know that if there are blasts, then a child has blood cancer, and if there are no blasts – then the child has been cured of cancer.
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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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Serezha resumes breathing after a pause, and Irina resumes talking. She told me that infection doctors in Murmansk said they had passed Serezha’s analyses over to hematologists. Irina has already seen quite many TV programs about leucosis, she had read about it in newspapers, and she knew that if hematologists are involved, then it is leucosis, although there are many other blood diseases beside cancer.
“If hematologists, it means – oncology?” asked Irina, and was right, unfortunately.
The sleeping boy skips a breath again, and we are standing above him in silence. Then he breathes again, and we resume talking in a whisper.
Irina told me that the chemo in Murmansk did not produce positive impact. She said there are no infusion pumps in Murmansk, no special equipment for dozing high-doze chemo. A doctor there told Irina it is necessary to count drops in the drip bulb, and mistake is not allowed, because the dozes are at the maximum of a human body’s capacity.
“What if I make a mistake while counting?” Irina asked one more standard question.
The doctor sighed sadly and shook his head.
Irina also told me she was, for some reason, banned from staying in the hospital ward together with her son, when he suffered of aplasia, a severe reaction to the toxic substance brought into the child’s body, after the chemo.
“Why can’t I stay with my son?” asked Irina, and other parents often ask that question as well.
Irina said that “Serezha grew wild” over the two weeks he had spent alone in the ward while staying under drip bulbs. The boy forgot how to pronounce those few words he had learned. Serezha cried all the time, and did not recognize his mother.
When it turned out the chemo did not work, Irina had to take her son to Moscow, to the Children’s Blood Cancer Institute. Irina recalls that the next day, doctors began asking her, as if in passing, whether she has other children. Irina was quite well informed on leucosis by that time, and she understood the doctors inquired about other children because siblings are often the best donors of bone marrow for each other.
“Do you think that transplantation might be needed?” Irina asked the doctor.
She doesn’t have other children. She is a very young woman. Serezha’s leucosis is developing so rapidly that Irina won’t have enough time to give birth to a second child, so as to transfer cord blood to Serezha instead of donor bone marrow.
A few days ago, Professor Alexei Maschan called Irina into his office and told her that transplantation is inevitable. Irina interpreted the professor’s words this way: without transplantation, her son has a 20-percent chance to survive, and with transplantation his chance is over 50 percent.
“If you agree, we’ll launch the donor search,” said the doctor. “Do you agree?” – one more frequently asked question. Doctors have to ask it even if their patient has no options.
We talk in a whisper, but Serezha wakes up, either because we awoke him, or because it is time to wake up. The boy wakes up, smiles, and tries to stand up so that his mother takes him into her arms.
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864,475 rubles needed to save Serezha Chaikin
According to Mikhail Maschan, head of the general hematology department at the Russian Children’s Clinical Hospital (RDKB), the doctors in Serezha’s home city of Murmansk “very competently carried out chemotherapy, along the same program as we have here”. After the first chemo, cancer cells decreased in number, “but did not disappear completely”. Had they disappeared, the doctors would have had a real chance to cure the little boy just by means of chemotherapy. Yet, that’s not Serezha’s case. Only donor bone marrow transplantation can save him now.
Serezha underwent his second chemotherapy course in RDKB. So far, there is no check puncture data yet. However, Doctor Maschan hopes for a remission this time. Since Serezha has no siblings, the hospital urgently launched the non-relative donor search in the international registry, on the Russian Aid Fund’s guarantee. “If we find the donor quickly, and manage to do the transplantation during the first remission, the success chances will considerably increase,” said Mikhail Maschan.
“It is a very open-hearted and cheerful little boy,” added the doctor.
The donor search for Serezha was ordered to the Stephan Morsch Foundation in Germany. It costs ˆ15,000. It will also take 625,000 rubles to buy Vifend and Cansidas antifungal medications. Patients take them before and right after transplantation. That will make up 1,152,550 rubles in total. As always, our permanent partner Ingosstrakh company will contribute $11,500.
So, 864,475 rubles more is needed to save Serezha Chaikin.
Dear friends, any contribution will be accepted with huge gratitude. Euro donations can be transferred directly to Germany, and ruble aid – to the Sberbank Moscow account of Serezha’s mother Irina Orestovna Chaikina.
The Russian Aid Fund has all the banking details.
Expert group of the Russian Aid Fund
Valery Panyushkin, specially for the Russian Aid Fund
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 12, 2007
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