Half a year ago Sasha's eye swelled so much that it stuck out and could turn around separately from the head. The doctor that made tomogram could not say anything intelligible and only shook his head. The nurse told Olya, “Here nobody will help. You’d better go to Moscow as soon as you can.”
Photo: Êèðèëë Òóëèí
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The City of Hope
// Little Sasha Giss Needs Radiotherapy in Germany
The 1.5 year old boy has rhabdomyosarcoma (cancer) of the left eye-socket. With one operation performed and another planned, his prospects are quite good. Chances are he won’t even remember his disease – the majority of people remember living since 2 years old. Only radiotherapy is needed. But no one in Russia knows how to treat with rays the searching and ever-moving eyes of small children. How can you make a little boy’s eyes stop moving when exposed to X-rays?
Sasha’s mother, Olya used to believe no health problems possible when you live at a resort. Living in Mineralnye Vody, a town in the Caucasus region, Olya thought that problems could only arise when it came to raising money or buying an apartment. Cancer seemed to be common with inveterate smokers or those as old as the hills (when there was nothing else to die of when your time had come). And your eyes out of your head spinning – this happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, or whatever sort of a movie about Mars. These things could happen to anyone else, not to her sweet baby.
But half a year ago a little swell popped up under Sasha’s left eye. It took only two weeks for the eye to swell so much that it stuck out and could turn around separately from the head. The doctor that made tomogram could not say anything intelligible and only shook his head. The nurse who assisted him told Olya when the doctor left the operating-room for a moment, “Here nobody will help. You’d better go to Moscow as soon as you can.”
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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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It was then that Olya understood they lived at no resort, but in a town where nobody would help. She packed up Sasha’s clothes and took him to the Helmholz Research Institute for Eye Diseases, Moscow. On the way, the boy felt sick, he had a temperature, and Olya feared he could die. But the kid didn’t whine or cry – he was too young to complain about anything. At that moment it occurred to Olya that small children treated pain in a special way: they cried when plaster torn off, but remained calm and quiet when temperature run, cancer developed and the eye stuck out of the head.
An operation was performed at the Helmholz Research Institute. The eye was put where it was to be. For the first time Olya saw those who could and did rescue her little son from the dreadful disease. Day by day more and more people appeared eager to help Sasha. But after the operation there was no opportunity to carry out radiotherapy necessary to keep on with combating sarcoma. It turned out that such an operation could be performed at the Children’s Oncohematology Institute, where actually leucoses, not sarcomata, were treated for. Olya says that unlike the doctors in the town where “nobody will help”, Doctor Litvinov of that Institute was very kind to her son.
There was no place for Sasha in the ward and some kind-hearted people offered their help: they had been renting apartments not far from the hospital for those kids who could not stay at the Institute for the lack of cots there. One could live near the hospital coming there every day to practice out-patient treatment.
There are four other families in the apartment where Olya and Sasha live. They also didn’t manage to stay at the hospital but wouldn’t give up the treatment. It need be said about a boy from the room next-door who has leucosis. From the outset he started to call Sasha his brother treating him as if this were true. The boy takes Sasha by the arm and walks him round the room so that the “brother”, having eyesight problems, couldn’t stumble and fall. He brought his table and chair to his “brother” to make it more convenient for him to read a picture book. He taught the “brother” that the cow in the book mooes, and the bear snarls.
So here we are sitting with Olya on the sofa in that rented apartment, Sasha sitting at the table mooing and snarling. Olya is so delighted talking about Moscow where “they will help.” But it feels she doesn’t understand that the city where “they will help” is not just a point on the map, nor the houses, streets and institutes. It’s the people who make up the city. Everyone can become citizen of this free city. There is no residence permit or registration here. Maybe those who are eager to help don’t know one another, but they do know that there are a great number of them, and they are the city.
Citizens, listen, there is no technology that allows for treating with rays the eye-socket of little patients who can’t be persuaded not to turn their eyes when exposed to X-rays. But this technology is available in Germany. Sasha Giss, a boy coming from the town where “nobody will help” here, to the city where “they will help”, needs it desperately.
We can help, can’t we?
&1.5 mln roubles ($60,000) needed to rescue Sasha Giss!
“Sasha has embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma of the left eye-socket,” says Larissa Shelekhova, doctor with the oncohematology ward of the 16th Russian Children’s Clinical Hospital. Three courses of chemotherapy performed, “the results are encouraging: the swell decreased considerably and there are no metastases.” Now Sasha needs radiotherapy but here, in Russia there is the lack of expertise in this sphere. The problem lies in the necessity to immobilize the kid and to direct the X-rays exactly at the relevant area of the eye. “Such kind of radiotherapy is best performed in Germany, with all their experience and skills,” Doctor Shelekhova claims.
“If we manage to treat Sasha in Munich, his prospects are good: the boy’s eyesight will improve and he will live a normal life.”
After his treatment in Germany, Sasha will undergo several free courses of chemotherapy in Russia to secure the results achieved. But this all is yet to come. So far the problem is in paying money up front for the radiotherapy, chemotherapy, anaesthesia and diagnostics. The Munich clinic “Schwabig” demands ˆ67,590, which Sasha’s parents can’t afford. His father, Yakov Giss, is a driver making 5,000 roubles ($200) a month, and Sasha’s mother Olya is on maternity leave (earlier she worked as a shop-assistant).
Our longstanding partners, a non-profit organization “Podari zhizn’” (Give a life), and Kapital Investment Group donated 740,800 roubles ($30,000) and 262,000 roubles ($10,500) correspondingly (follow the link www.rusfond.ru to get more details). So, another 1.5 mln roubles ($60,000) is needed. It’s quite a big sum, and we will accept every rouble you may donate. Donations in euros can be transferred to Germany, and those in roubles – to the account of Sasha’s mother, Olga. Legal entities can transfer money to the account of the “Pomoshch” (Relief) charity fund, whose founders are the Kommersant Publishing House and Lev Ambinder. Your money will be immediately transferred to the account of Sasha’s mother, with a report card e-mailed to you. You can get the account details at the Russian Aid Fund.
Russian Aid Fund experts
Valery Panyushkin, specially for Russian Aid Fund
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 11, 2008
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