"I do not hurt to take a puncture"

Katya's parents try not to pronounce her diagnosis out loud again. Katya tries to walk

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A friend gave Katya a aquarium fish, and Katya wants a dog. But with the dog you need to walk every day, but Katya cannot.

The fish floats in the aquarium and does not know grief. And Katya had nothing last hurt three years ago. She was then 13 years old, she was engaged in martial arts. Most of all she wanted to become a master of oncoming attacks. In karate there is no division into weight categories, and Katya, too small and light, never attacked the first. She waited for the enemy to come closer, try to attack, and then beat. She jumped in height, aimed at the head, forced me by surprise.

Katina Rybkafoto: Irina Koplanova for TD

She was afraid of mistakes, said that for mistakes they would “look askance”: “ Other athletes loved to notice my mistakes, criticize. Maybe somehow envied. But I tried not to even look at them. First place, and that's it. Then you don’t want to communicate with me - no. There was such a thing in Russian competitions that the girls from my category at first chatted with me, but as soon as I take first place - all, they do not communicate with me. ”

They whispered behind her, and Katya won. She went to competitions around the world, took second place in the World Cup in Ireland, first place in the European Championship in Serbia.

“She’s horror to the medals,” her mother laughs, Lyubov Aleksandrovna.

Today they ask Katya: "Katya, what are you proud of?" She says: "I can boast of the fact that it does not hurt to take a puncture."

"Mom, will I be bald?"

Once, in the summer of 2020, Katya went to competitions in the Czech Republic and did not bring a single medal. She said she was tired. And that her ear hurts. “Probably something is wrong with the aircraft. Laid it. " Katya was quickly taken to the doctor, to the ENT, they made her rinsing, but they advised her not to be especially worried. And Katya stopped squeezing. Previously, she could easily be a hundred times in a row, and indeed everything could, but now she lay down in the bed. The whole body was sick, the pulse went off scale, the painkillers almost did not help, it was necessary to constantly increase the dose. No one knew what to do. A few months later they were suddenly lucky: an old surgeon listened to Katya and did not dismiss. I thought and sent it to hematology.

Katya's leukocytes in the blood turned out to be 30 times more than normal. On August 8, 2020, Katya was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The first thing she asked: "Mom, will I be bald?" The teenager, who still saw cancer patients only in melodramas, was not to die, but to bald. Now Katya believes that being bald is very convenient. Over the years of illness, she used to not spare herself and fight. Focus, wait for the attack and work out the oncoming. The weight category is not important if you are a master in battle.

Katya looks out the window of her room in a rented apartment in St. Petersburg, where she and her mother live after a transplantation: Ksenia Maximova for TD

Under the weight of the diagnosis, the usual world of the Shilkov family collapsed. Dad Katya, Alexander Alexandrovich, trucker, returned from flights home. The favorite thing was suddenly meaningless. Thirteen -year -old Katya passed after five blocks of chemotherapy. The doctors were waiting for whether it would go to remission - at least for a short while - to begin bone marrow transplantation. Alien bone marrow “reboots” the new body, rebuilds it in its own healthy way. In theory, it sounds great, as if a person is given a chance to regain health or, more precisely, create a new one. But surviving transplantation is not easy. The procedure itself - transfusion of new blood cells - takes only half an hour, but before it you need to destroy the patient's cells, and then to cope with the rejection reaction and make sure that the new bone marrow works. No one can predict how fiercely the body will fight against someone else's organ, which suddenly turned out to be “in power”.

Before transplantation, an analysis of typification of tissue compatibility of the donor and recipient cells is necessarily carried out. If there is such an opportunity, then the initially potential donors are looking for in the family. If they are not found in the family, then they are looking for in the register. Most often, children find donors among relatives, since a children's body does not need one hundred percent tissue compatibility. The Advita Foundation paid for these research, and the donor was found. Katin dad came up. At this time, Alexander Alexandrovich no longer worked, the shore of himself from any possible infections, underwent a complete medical examination and was ready to go to St. Petersburg to become a donor.

In early January 2021, the family began to prepare for transplantation. Remembering this, Lyubov Alexandrovna looks like tears as mechanically as the laces tie or brush their teeth.

Transplantation of hematopoietic cells was prescribed for February 16.

The transplant against the owner

There are two ways to take bone marrow cells from the donor. One of them is a fest a pelvic cell. Before that, Alexander Alexandrovich was never under anesthesia, and on the operating table his pressure jumped to 160. But the very next day after the operation, he rushed to bring all the necessary things to the hospital. The ten -kilogram backpack took over, despite the recommendations of doctors, not to raise weights of more than three kilograms. When he thought about Katya, he forgot about himself.

Catifoto's bedside table icons: Irina Koplanova for TD

After successful bone marrow transplantation, RTPH usually occurs (reaction "transplant against the owner"). On the one hand, it indicates that the donor cells work, they are active. On the other hand, the cells fight against their new owner, so a separate work with a complication is required. The severity is individual. Sometimes the reaction lasts several weeks, and sometimes for several years. Sometimes he hits one point, and sometimes attacks different organs in turn, blindly trying to destroy the owner.

The new immunity attacked Katino the body from all sides. On the nineteenth day after the operation, she was refused the kidneys, the liver, the edema of the brain and lungs occurred, the intestines stopped and the veno -oxyonal liver disease began. So that Katya has a chance to survive, she was introduced into a coma. When the doctors informed her parents that the girl could die, Lyubov Alexandrovna ended with strength: “I could no longer be on duty near Katya, I was shaking all, it felt like my soul flew off somewhere, and the body was left.” She was replaced by her husband. Dad spent eight months from Katya in the intensive care unit. Alexander Alexandrovich tried to provide all help to the younger medical staff and, like a mantra, repeated: "Everything will be fine."

Lyubovifoto: Ksenia Maksimova for TD

“ It seems to me that if I were with Katya in intensive care, I would just kill her with my condition if she looked at it. And he, on the contrary, somehow positively gave her his presence. I wouldn’t do this, I have already exhausted all my strength, ”says Lyubov Aleksandrovna. She lived alone in an empty apartment, a neighbor looked after her. While Katya was asleep, Lyubov Alexandrovna lived on the verge of nervous exhaustion and left the house only in order to visit the icon of Nikolai the Wonderworker in the church and ask for “for Katya”.

Katya, now you wake up

Katya’s friends from Krasnodar-Roman and his sister Diana-showered an unrequited phone with tireless SMS: “Katya, you wake up, read,” “Kat, now you will wake up, and we are doing something.”

A month later, Katya woke up. Parents cried with joy, Katya cried. She did not feel her legs. Dad lifted her, put it, she slapped her legs on the floor, like a bird of a herb-clap, clap-felt that somewhere there, below, the support, but she didn’t feel the feet at all, as if it were not based on her own native legs, but on wooden strokes, which could only knock on the floor to the beat and almost did not hold.

But Katya does not know how to give up. First, it was taught by a medical robot, and then dad encouraged it. He wore a chair for Katya, on which she was sitting to catch her breath every 10 meters: “Hands did not drop, no. It happened that it was very bad, I don’t want anything, leave me alone. Then - one, Roman, Diana, my parents supported, and I got up again and went, ”Katya recalls. As soon as she managed to get an end to new restrictions and pain, she was overtaken by a new complication, and Katya went to bed again, and her legs again forgot how to walk.

Katin Black Belt on Carate Certokantoto: Irina Koplanova for TD

Due to the attack on the intestines, Katya again fell into intensive care. She ate, but the food did not absorb, and the girl felt hunger all the time. She weighed only 31.7 kilograms, when the Advita Foundation came to the rescue and bought specialized food for Katya.

The exhausted girl served as a bait for all kinds of infections: she suffered herpes, Epstein's virus - barrel, two serious protracted pneumonia, aspergillosis. The complications went in a continuous series, leaving no time for teenage dramas or adolescence. Katino Youth proceeded in the shadow of lymphoblastic leukemia.

“I still sleep badly at night,” Lyubov Alexandrovna admits, “at four in the morning I go to bed, I drink sedatives. Everything has lost. But I will recover. They say to me: “Love, take it there, paint, make up.” I say: “Girls, my child will recover, and I flourish.” Now there is nothing to do. "

Now Katya overcomes the consequences of the RTPH eye, which began a couple of months ago: the skin was damaged, a slightly suffered eye nerve. Hormonal therapy passes. So far, she is strictly prohibited by a strong load on her knees, but Katya strives to train on permissible scale, at least to perform physiotherapy exercises. In the corridor there is a simulator transmitted by the Advita Foundation. The Shilkovs even found a coach who is engaged in Katya Karate. Naturally, there can be no question of competitions, so Katya measuredly hones the techniques, performing Kata.

In addition to the dog, Katya dreams of braces. Doctors do not allow: Katya’s mucous membranes in the mouth is still inflamed and high risk of infections, but Katya suffers and waits. She plans to live long and smile a lot.

Katyafoto: Ksenia Maksimova for TD

Throughout Katya’s treatment in St. Petersburg, the ADVITA Foundation helped the family, which is working closely with the Research Institute of Dog. R. M. Gorbacheva - here the largest number of bone marrow transplantations are performed for children and adults from all over Russia. Advita pays for urgent research, for example, typification for the selection of a donor, and reagents for the work of laboratories. Without the help of the Katya Foundation, they would not be able to find a suitable donor so quickly and transplant on time. It is increasingly difficult to work the fund: the reagents for typing donors and recipients are purchased abroad, and now the price for them has increased, the terms and terms of delivery have changed, and the number of applications for help is growing every day.

Please support the work of the fund so that as many children and adults as possible to win the battle for their lives in 2023.