Kruzhilina Olga, born on 8 March 1997
Diagnosis: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Up-to-date news about treatment of Olga Kruzhilina
ATTENTION! ON ON 27/03/2016 AS of: Fundraising is closed!!
For us and Olechka great news: The Ministry of Health will pay for the treatment of Olga in Italy. She is receiving treatment and is waiting to return home. We wish her a speedy recovery!
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In the beginning of January 2015, I began feeling ill – I was feeling dizzy all the time and had no appetite. I assumed it was all caused by too much stress from work and school. A month went by and my condition became worse; I was too tired to take the long walks I've always loved...
I decided to go to the ambulatory clinic and had bloodwork done there. The results showed a low hemoglobin, and repeated bloodwork showed that the hemoglobin fell even lower
Olga before her illness
My face became greenish-pale, my lips became white, and I didn't have much of an appetite. Treatment in the city of Mariupol's children's hospital did not result in any improvement, and after I'd been in the hospital for a week, they found malignant blasts in my labwork.
On the 1st of April, my mother and I went to the Children's Regional Hospital of the city of Zaporozhye, where after more labwork I was diagnosed with blood cancer (acute lymphoblastic leukemia). I began an intensive course of chemotherapy, and after 15 days of it I was in remission – which means that I had no more lymphoblasts in my blood, but that did not mean I was cured. The chemotherapy resulted in serious adverse effects: ileus, which resulted in me being admitted to intensive care for the first time, and then losing a great deal of weight (my weight dropped from 122 lb down to 97 lb). Afterwards, I also had central nervous system complications: hallucinations and seizures, which resulted in intensive care once more. For a while treatment of leukemia was placed on hold. I didn't feel like doing anything – drawing, playing the guitar, watching movies, or interacting with my friends did not appeal to me; I got depressed... Physically and emotionally, I was at rock bottom. Parents and close friends and family were saying that I was a completely different person and were surprised that I became a quiet, drab, apathetic young woman, so different from my usual cheerful self... But despite all of the above, I continued fighting and kept believing that everything would pass, and everything did pass...For a while at least!
At the beginning of May I started having severe abdominal pain and bloating; my nails became blue and my face became greenish. I was running a persistent fever and vomiting constantly. MRI revealed a slowly progressing peritonitis, which would have been lethal if it weren't found in time – a person with peritonitis survives for about two weeks, on average; my body fought it for a month... On the 29th of May the surgeons in the regional hospital performed a very complicated five-hour-long surgery, and once again I was admitted to intensive care. I had a tube in my throat and catheters everywhere; it took me a lot of time and difficulty to recover from anesthesia. All this time I believed in my recovery, which kept me going. I was re-learning how to walk, a step each day. Constant irrigations, IV fluids, insomnia, malaise, pain – all these were my daily companions. I lost even more weight (from 97lb down to 80lb)
It became painful for me to see myself in the mirror and to see my exhausted mom, who had been staying at my bedside all this time. The treatment of leukemia had been paused for an entire 45 days, and with leukemia delay in treatment can result in recurrence!
On August 3rd, I turned 18, and therefore I am being transferred to the adult hospital, where none of the treatment is free. My parents are not wealthy, and unfortunately we are running out of money, because at the adult hospital one dose of chemotherapy costs around USD 2,000, and I will need a large number of doses until my treatment is completed. How much more I have to go through and what kinds of things I will need to survive – nobody knows, because each person responds to chemotherapy differently...
I ask all caring people who are able to do so, to respond to my appeal, to help me financially or just to encourage me – after all, nobody ever knows what can happen tomorrow! I need other people's support now more than ever! Please help me to look forward for tomorrow with confidence, to be fulfilled, to play my guitar again, to meet up with my friends, to study, to achieve my goals – in general, simply to LIVE!
The family lives in the city of Mariupol, Donetsk Region.
Phone number of Olga's mother: +38 067 850 31 00.
For additional information, please contact The Happy Child Foundation
