Tanya died in Lugansk on February 5.
Did we know that would happen?
Yes, we did.
Tanya had the fourth stage of cancer, so everything pointed in that direction.
I often ask myself whether Lilya, Ira, Inna, Sofia, and other people under our care would have died if it weren’t for the war?
I don’t know.
At first glance, it would seem it wasn’t the war that killed them.
It was cancer.
A disease which cuts down people irrespective of where and how they live. Rich, beautiful, young, successful. Cancer doesn’t care. Scientists are looking for causes, they seem to have found something, there are various theories. But…nobody can say anything with confidence.
I first encountered that disease when I was 14, when a school friend got ill. I visited him for a year, every week, in the children’s ward on Kashirka. He had lung cancer and he should have died.
But he survived. In spite of it all.
I remember well the children in the hallway who would at some point disappear.
I was a child myself, and my mom at first would not allow me to go to the hospital, fearing for me. She was probably right. But I could not be stopped.
I I also remember my naive question asked of the small lovely girl with an IV: “why?” “for what?”
The people we cared for were killed by cancer.
The young Tanya was killed by cancer.
She left behind Maksim who now lives in an orphanage.
This is not combat. Not bombings, not wounds.
It’s a terrible disease which carried off this beautiful young girl with an IV whom I saw on the Kashirka.
It carried off many.
But you know what I know for certain?
I know that if it weren’t for the war, many of these people would have been able to obtain proper care in time. Get drugs, surgeries, accurate diagnoses. And some would have survived.
Many of them developed cancer as they sat in cellars and were afraid to go outside.
Many of them had cancer develop at a spectacular speed after what they lived through.
Yes, one can say that in some cases war was the catalyst.
Doctors in the cancer ward in Lugansk told us many times that now Lugansk is experiencing a cancer boom. Long lines which the surgeons can’t cope with. There was nothing like that before the war.
And yes, I think Tanya was killed by the war.
Please pray, those of you who are believers, for Tanya.
RIP
Tanya and her son in December. One of the last photos where she’s smiling.
