"Instead of us, grants are won by a biker surgeon"

As in the Siberian industrial city with one of the highest levels of incidence of oncology, volunteers create chambers of palliative care

Angarsk is an industrial town in Eastern Siberia, born of the grandiose post -war construction sites of the Soviet Union. On the basis of trophy petrochemical equipment taken out of Germany in 1945, an Angarsk petrochemical plant was built. To service the plant nearby, an entire city has grown, which has acquired several more powerful plants. In less than 30 years, the population of Angarsk exceeded 250 thousand people. In recent years, the city is slowly decreasing, local residents are increasingly preferring to go to work in the neighboring regional center of Irkutsk. But the chemical industry of Angarsk and the local enterprise of Rosatom are still working properly - and this is noticeable in medical statistics.

According to the local Ministry of Health, 226 thousand residents account for 1,200 registered patients with the most severe - fourth - stage of cancer. The incidence of oncology in the city is on average three times higher than in Russia.

“There is only one oncology center in the city. Well, how it works. As a rule, they try to get rid of patients with difficulties. If they make a diagnosis and find out that the patient has a “four” (fourth stage of cancer. - TD), then they say: “All the best,” and they do not take one medical facility. And suddenly he, God forbid, will begin to die there and ruin their statistics, ”says Natalia Titova.

A few years ago, she, along with like -minded people, tried to open a hospice in Angarsk - a hospital for those whom the dispensary already considers hopeless. Before that, her grandmother, father and mother died from cancer.

After the opening of the palliative department in Angarsk Photo: Natalia Titova

“Mom left the hardest,” says Natalia. - Then I dragged it on myself, as it happens in such cases in our hospitals. Of course, they did not take her to the dispensary. I, literally without leaving, looked after her at home. To go about your business and just relax and get enough sleep, I managed to put my mother in a dispensary at least for the weekend for a bribe. ”

But here it turned out that the departure in the dispensary is much worse than the home.

The head of the department took the money, placed Natalia's mother in a ward filled with patients and went on his own weekend. Running along two floors between the patients, one nurse was torn.

“It so happened that next to my mother lay a woman with a broken hand in a gypsum - and she dragged her mother to the toilet and back, because there was simply no nurse nearby. When I came and saw it, I almost fell to the floor ... "

Soon, Natalya also put her mother for a bribe for an operation, after which the doctors said that everything went successfully, and there would be no more cancer. And a few months later, my mother died.

“When her condition only worsened, they told us that this was not cancer, but depression. Well, we sent my mother to the Irkutsk sanatorium “Angara”. We tried to treat depression with songs and dancing ... Passing through all this, I gave a vow that I would make a merciful house and help people to die with dignity, if it is not possible to cure them.

The hospice, as it turned out, cannot be established by private individuals, because only state institutions can use such strong painkillers acting at the fourth stage of cancer. Then we decided to create a charity foundation “close to heart”, which will at least initiate the appearance of the state hospice. It’s good that at that time we were supported by the city health - we were allocated two small chambers in the Angarsk hospital. ”

Patients lie extremely close to each other, and therefore see how someone dies at the distance of an outstretched hand

Now the two small rooms of the city hospital, in which 10 beds are located, are called parapalliative assistance. They are placed in patients who are not taken by the oncode dispensary, and whose relatives are not able to provide proper care. The Foundation “Close to Heart” put special beds in the wards, supplies them with hygiene products and now collects money for modern equipment.

“Of course, this is also not at all what we would like. The beds in the wards are huddled. Patients lie extremely close to each other, and therefore they see how someone dies at the distance of an outstretched hand. This is unacceptable, because a person immediately begins to understand that something like that awaits him. And most importantly, it helps in this state is faith. No wonder the patients constantly say that they treat the walls of the house. And to most of our patients we go home, ”explains the second employee of the Foundation Zhanna Plotnikova.

The work of the palliative department at the Angarsk hospital photo: Yana Arkhipova

According to Zhanna - the head of the exit service. And the only employee of this service. There are no cars for the away service, so by a hundred patients Jeanne sets off on a road ticket on a tram.

“Now the state of the fund has been reduced, and Jeanne was left alone on the city - and even for the entire Angarsky district. If they call from the district village, we simply cannot refuse and not go, ”says Natalia Titova. -Previously, the city hospital allocated us some kind of bobik. Could carry racks, droppers, on the schedule it was necessary to order, do not understand how much time. "

Every day, Jeanne goes to patients who lie at home for months and cannot rise. She has a tourniquet next to the cosmetic bag. Arriving at the house, she collects a tripod from improvised means - she fixes the mop and shakes her dropper with tape or uses a stepladder. While she is collecting a tripod, she is trying to talk everyday with the patient, so that he does not close in illness.

It seemed to us, what if we won: well, the price of the car was one and a half million rubles in total

“Now for us the most acute question is an exit service. We want to equip it with at least one special machine, ”says Natalya Titova. - In this car there is everything to help and transport patients. Three years ago, the authorities told us: “Oh, what an interesting program you have! Apply to the presidential grant. ” It seemed to us, and suddenly we won: well, the price of the car was one and a half million rubles. It seemed to us then that everything was. Now, due to changes in the course, its price has increased to 2.3 million, and in three years we never received a grant. Moreover, each time it takes a dumb, when you open a list of winners of presidential grants. We cannot get a medical car for cancer patients. Instead of us, the biker surgeon wins the grants (in 2015, the Night Wolves bikers received more than nine million rubles for their New Year's Eve.-TD) and some communists. There is no faith in this event left, collecting donations on the planet. Ru helped us much more. So it turns out: it remains only to rely on yourself. ”