"Everything bad in life has already happened"

The story of a Ukrainian who found himself in St. Petersburg with a child saved by Russian doctors, but without the opportunity to return home

“I can’t return to Ukraine - there is a“ special operation ”, the borders are closed, and I can’t stay in Russia - I have no one here and nothing,” says Victoria Mikhaleva, who brought the cancer -patient son for treatment from Kherson to Moscow last December. She is distracted by a boy lying nearby, thin, weak, completely without hair, with huge eyes, sharply standing out on a haggard face.

“Mom ...” The son whispers something quietly in her ear. “Kitten, we have no money,” she answers him and turns to me. - He wants borsch, fried potatoes, toy. All this will cost a thousand rubles. And I have only two on the map, who threw the mothers that were treated with us together in St. Petersburg. Bogdan constantly asks to eat, after the operation he weighed 19 kg, and I can’t explain to him that there are norms in the dining room.

Until the end of last year, Victoria Mikhava lived with her husband and son in Kherson (a small city in the south of Ukraine). Bogdan was eight years old, in the fall he went to the third grade.

“In the evening of September 5, we noticed that his son began to mow his left eye,” the woman says. - On September 6, they turned to the optometrist. He sent to a neurologist. He looked and sent to CT.

Bogdan was already barely walking that day, his head was spinning, vomiting did not stop. On CT, the doctors saw the accumulation of fluid and the neoplasm in the boy’s brain.

“After that,” Victoria continues, “a neurosurgeon came to us and said:“ You have a tumor in your head, time goes to his watch, you need to urgently go to Kyiv. ” We gathered and went.

In the Ukrainian capital, at the Institute of Neurosurgery. Romodanov, Bogdan was installed by a shunt to pump out fluid from the brain. They took blood on the oncomarkers and puncture from the spine. According to these two analyzes, they concluded that the child has a hermional tumor (as in the documents). Mikhalevs was sent to the National Institute of Cancer. Lomonosov, also in Kyiv. Oncologists insisted on biopsy and never confirmed the diagnosis of neurosurgeons, putting a question mark opposite him. Nevertheless, from the institute. Romodanov was discharged and sent home to Kherson, prescribing chemotherapy. After two sessions, chemistry was recommended to conduct an MRI of the brain.

“As soon as their son began to introduce chemistry, our doctor in Kherson noticed that Bogdan’s body reacts to it differently than he should, and suggested making an MRI after the first session,” recalls Mikhalev. - But from Kyiv they answered: "No, as it is written in the protocol of treatment, so let it be." After two sessions of chemotherapy, we made an MRI, the doctor looked and immediately said to me: “Everything became much worse. The tumor increased, and if there were five metastases before chemistry, now there are 25 of them, and those five have increased. ” They gave me the results in my hands, I left the child in the hospital and went to Kyiv, to neurosurgery. I go to the doctor of medical sciences, who was set by Schunt's son, and ask: “Why did you get the idea that Bogdan has a hermional tumor? Look what's wrong with him! " I was asked to go out, they convened a consultation, for four hours I sat in the corridor and waited for a decision. Finally called. I go into the office. Eight candidates of sciences and doctors of sciences are sitting, and all of them unanimously trying to explain to me how serious the cancer is, and that on the oncomarkers, by location it is a hermional tumor, inoperative. “The fact that Bogdan was prescribed chemistry is right. If the operation was assigned, he might not have to get up from the table. ”

At the end of the conversation, I ask: "And what, I can’t save the child?"

Doctor of Medical Sciences replies: “Input chemistry, we simply extend its days of life. Get ready. As soon as chemistry comes out of the body, death. ” I return to Kherson. I come to the hospital, go to the ward and understand that I need to say goodbye to my child. All. The other day I will go to the ward, and he will no longer look at me.

- The next day I met with a friend whose daughter died four years ago from cancer. Besides her, it is unlikely that anyone would understand me. We talked for a long time. Drawn up an action plan. How we found the personal number of the Moscow professor Olga Zhelodkova, I do not remember. We knew that she raises even unbearable children, those on whom they put a cross. I wrote to her: “Please, I beg you, help you save my son, you are the only chance, we have buried a child.” I sent the ventricle to the post office all our documents and the results of MRI. An hour later, she called me: “You have not a hermional tumor. Neither by oncomarkers, nor by location. The location of the hermional tumor is located in the other part of the head. Not a single case has been recorded all over the world when a malignant hermional tumor is located elsewhere. You have been appointed for December 14 at the best neurosurgery of Russia, you will be engaged in the best team. ”

For ten days, Victoria collected all the necessary documents and money for the road. In order to cure the child, the woman sold the room in the hostel - the only real estate she had. She lived with her son in her husband’s apartment. Vika has no relatives for a long time.

“I had a lot of debts,” she explains. -When we left the hospital in Kherson and immediately went to Kyiv, on the way I made out online bunks, since the child had to be urgently treated. I did not know anything about charitable foundations. I only took 67 thousand hryvnias on the first day, it was about 200 thousand rubles. Upon returning to Kherson, lenders pressed very strongly. It was necessary to extinguish the acquired debts. I had to sell the room, but even that was not enough. My husband is a trucker (he is not Bogdan's father, but officially accepted his paternity).

In December, he left. He said that to earn money for a return of debts, for an operation to a child, for life. But I didn't see him anymore.

Now we are in the process of divorce, to which he filed an application online from Poland. And his relatives threw my things out of the apartment and changed the castles. I wrote on the Internet posts with a prayer for help. People in Ukraine, who were how much, dropped, helped. If not for people, we would not have survived. In Russia, the Constantine Khabensky charity fund paid us all the treatment, all medicines.

On December 14, Bogdan was operated on. The operation went well. The tumor was removed. Only its small part remained, inexperienced, because the cerebellum snuffs tightly. The child was taken tests and sent to a biopsy in Germany. According to its results, the boy was confirmed by a pilot astrocytom, benign, but aggressive.

“It was impossible to introduce chemistry,” Vika retells what the doctors explained to her in his own words. -Because of this, the tumor has become aggressive, and the son now has a full spine of metastases.

After the operation, the child was lying. Only now he is slowly learning to get up, sit down, walk, holding on to some support. From Moscow, the boy was sent to the St. Petersburg clinic for proton therapy. Here Vika recognized the terrible news.

- On February 24 at 9 in the morning, my father of the child called me and asked: “Vika, are you all right? Are you alive? " I tell him in shock: everything is fine, we are in a hospital in St. Petersburg, now let's go to the Protons.

And he suddenly burst into tears: “Vic, we have <“ special operation ”> ...” I turned on the TV, set up Ukrainian channels and saw what was happening in my town.

Then friends from Ukraine began to send me videos with shouts: “Do not return here! With a lying child, you just won't reach ... "

On March 14, Mikhalevs are prescribed from the St. Petersburg clinic. Vicki's son is alive. But she has nothing more: neither her husband, no money, nor housing, nor the opportunity to calmly return to her native country.

“Where should we go and what to do, I don’t know,” the mother cries sobbing, hiding her face in the bald nape of her son. “I can’t return there, and here I have no life.” In Ukraine <"Special operation">. How much it lasts is unknown. The boundaries are closed. I stayed in a foreign country. I have no one here. I can’t go to my neighbor and lend 50 hryvnias on bread. I have nothing to live on now. Bogdan was appointed rehabilitation in Moscow, but one must somehow get there and there, too, somehow live there. Not a single charity fund - neither in Ukraine nor in Russia - by law has the right to pay for us food, elementary hygiene supplies, clothes (we left, we have no other things), travel (neither intercity, nor in the city), tests, doctors. Parents must cover all these expenses from their pocket. The funds say: mom should earn it. How? I have a child in the hospital. I would go to wash the floors, but I can’t leave the child alone in the clinic, I can’t even get out of here. You put a post on the Internet with a request for money, and under it they write to you: “How did these beggars get it, I don’t care if your child will die or not, stop clogging the Internet with your petitions!” And I read it at night and think: everything bad that could happen to me in life has already happened.

Comment of the Konstantin Khabensky Foundation
According to the article about the boy and mother from Ukraine to whom we help, the following information.

1. Mom received and continues to receive help from the fund on issues specialized for us - this is examination, treatment, drugs, rehabilitation, logistics - all necessary for examination, treatment and rehabilitation.

2. Accommodation in Moscow takes on a charity organization friendly to us, with which we are actively cooperating and which we help. Mom, even before hospitalization, had an agreement at MIBS, and she and her son are willing to accept. They provide everything necessary, including products. Moms themselves are prepared in cozy and well -equipped kitchens.

3. If mom needs legal assistance, we are ready to organize it independently or attract friendly organizations, in the coming days we will talk with mom about this. And we, of course, are ready to continue to help.

Now, in addition to urgent collection of information on how we can provide neurooncological patients with drug reserves and what we can buy from the equipment for leading Russian relevant clinics, we also think about the possibility of developing assistance to our wards, which have been in difficult life situations. These are refugees with children (or young patients themselves under 25) with brain tumors from Ukraine, and for a long time there are citizens of Ukraine, and residents of the DPR and LPR who have received Russian citizenship, these are Russian citizens and citizens of other countries of the former republics of the USSR among our wards, who will be more difficult not only treated, but also to survive in the domestic sense.

Director of the Konstantin Khabensky Foundation Ekaterina Bartosh

Sberbank card number Victoria Yuryevna Mikhaleva 4817760404875795.