The bump in Anton’s leg proved to be not a callus but a sarcoma. In real life, there also exist magic items like endoprosthesis, which can replace an organic bone and an organic joint. Yet, it is much harder to buy magic items in real life than to buy a magic bow in the fantasy world.
Photo: Grigoriy Sobchenko
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Prosthesis for Elf
// Anton Piskarev needs to have his sarcoma-stricken knee replaced
Anton Piskarev is 14 years old. He suffers of Ewing's sarcoma, a tumor that has replaced his shinbones in one leg. The more of the tumor is removed, the more holes appear in the bones. Now when the tumor stopped growing after chemo and ray therapy, it is necessary, within three weeks, to replace Anton’s sarcoma-eaten bones with an endoprosthesis, an artificial bone with an artificial joint. Yet, Anton does not have an endoprosthesis. Neither has he the money to buy it in Germany. The boy’s doctors risk losing time, and the sarcoma will be back then.
In the magic world of Lineage computer game, Anton is an Elf Archer. Lineage is a multiplayer online game, where one can choose a character and subject it to breath-taking adventures. At first, Anton wandered around a city where it is unsafe after dusk. He undertook brief outings to adjacent villages devastated by a recent civil war. In villages, forests, and near the rivers, Anton fought against monsters, and every victory brought him a little money. If one saved up a large sum, one could buy a magic bow, for instance. With that bow, one could join a magic bloodpledge, becoming eligible to engage in castle sieges, to acquire lands, magic weapons, wisdom, magic skills, and an ability to survive the wounds inflicted by magic weapons.
In real life, Anton was a 12-year-old boy, who once played soccer and was hit in his leg with the ball. The bruise was unexpectedly painful. Anton’s mother took him to an emergency center, where they treated the bruise and said to rub anti-inflammatory ointment into it.
In the magic world of Lineage, Anton joined a group of other adventurers like him. Together, they could attack stronger monsters, get more money, weapons, and magic items, and counteract the assassins that raid the magic world. However, assassin is just a notional term there. In fact, they are robbers who attack characters so as to rob them of power, wisdom, and wealth. In the way we mean it, the magic world of Lineage does not know illness or death.
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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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In real life, a seemingly insignificant bruise, inflicted by a soccer ball, did not heal. The leg swelled and hurt. Anton’s mother took him to the Filatov Children’s Hospital, where the boy was diagnosed with osteomyelitis. For a while, Anton had to share his computer time with his mother. It is not that she began playing Lineage as well. She searched the Internet for information on osteomyelitis, and when she read it, it made her really afraid and worried.
In the magic world of Lineage, Anton joined a powerful bloodpledge and participated in a castle siege. It was breathtaking. The clan bought siege guns from dwarfs. The warriors besieged the castle, shaking their magic swords. Elf viragos were especially beautiful in their fluttering gowns. The clan chief supervised the siege, sitting on a dragon’s back.
In real life, Anton had his bone cleaned. Doctors lanced the leg’s skin and muscular layers, drilled holes in the bone, inserted drainage tubes through the holes, and washed the bone from the inside. Anton stayed either in the hospital or at home. School friends did not visit him, except for the only one. He offered to Anton to set up their own Lineage server, so that they become able to dictate their own rules to dwarfs and elves, orcs and people -- the game rules that seem fairer to the boys. In their free time, the two friends worked enthusiastically. They have learned to control lands and waters, the sky and magic powers. Meanwhile, a bump began growing on Anton’s leg, and the boy and his mother believed it was a callus. The doctors promised to them that a callus would grow in the bone’s cleaned cavities.
In the magic world of Lineage, Anton no longer plays as an Elf Archer. It proved more fascinating to be developing and altering the magic universe. One’s own server gives fantastic powers to control it. For instance, someone added love and weddings to the magic world where war and trade only had existed. However, none of server owners ever thought of bringing inexplicable diseases to the wonderful computer world.
The bump in Anton’s leg proved to be not a callus but a sarcoma, or cancer tumor. In real life, its growth can be stopped by X-rays, which might actually be more magical than magic rays from the computer game. In real life, there also exist magic items like endoprosthesis, which can replace an organic bone and an organic joint. Yet, it is much harder to buy magic items in real life than to buy a magic bow in the fantasy world.
Anton is 14. He simply does not realize yet, that the real world is much more magical and dangerous than the virtual one.
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746,000 rubles are needed to save Anton Piskarev
Dr. Nadezhda Ivanova, leading research associate of the locomotorium cancer department at the Blokhin R&D Institute, believes that Anton is ready to have the prosthesis installed: “The boy arrived to us in September 2007, after three osteomyelitis surgeries in the Filatov Children’s Hospital. We diagnosed him with Ewing’s sarcoma of left shinbone. Anton underwent five chemotherapy courses and ray therapy. There is good result: the process has been localized, there are no metastases.” The doctors said that an endoprosthesis produced by German company Implantcast is the most suitable one for Anton. “We’ll have to remove the entire shinbone, and the German prosthesis will completely replace it,” said Dr. Ivanova. “Besides, the boy is already past his growth period. So, Anton will not need an extendable prosthesis like the U.S.-made one that your readers have already bought for our patients with the same diagnosis.” The German prosthesis has a flexible knee joint, and it will do everything that a biological leg can do. It is installed for lifetime. “With this endoprosthesis, Anton will not fall out of social life, and he’ll be able to have a normal lifestyle just like his peers,” believes Dr. Ivanova.
The endoprosthesis produced by German company Implantcast costs 746,000 rubles. The Piskarevs are unable to buy it with their own means. Anton’s mother Elena Piskareva works as a manager in a small company in Moscow. His sister Olesya is a seventh-grader in school. Russia’s state budget does not cover such purchases yet.
Dear friends! Your donations can be transferred to the endoprosthesis’ Moscow supplier or to the account of Elena Gennadievna Piskareva, opened for her in Sberbank by our Fund. Any aid will be accepted with gratitude. The Fund has all banking details.
Expert group of the Russian Aid Fund
Valery Panyushkin, specially for the Russian Aid Fund
All the Article in Russian as of Feb. 29, 2008
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