Eight of the people for whom we were caring and who were ill with cancer passed away during the past two years. I don’t know how to take this–is it many or a few? Probably many, considering that we did not help all that many cancer patients. We’re not a big foundation, we do not have a staff of paid workers and masses of volunteers. Nearly all the people we help are people about whom we found out by chance, through friends or through the Lugansk Aid Center.
I don’t know what the course of their illness would have looked like if it weren’t for the war. It’s possible they would not have it, or perhaps they would have. Who knows?
But I do know that the majority of them were not able to get the treatment they needed in time. There was not enough money for medications, no ability to see a doctor. Some of them became ill with cancer just when the fighting started or just before. During that initial phase the doctors may have been able to help. For example, Lilya, who had to hide in cellars with her son and worry about falling shells, when she needed to go to a cancer clinic. Ira, Inna, Lilya, Sofiya, all of them were in the terminal stage. We tried to help them as best we could, we fought together with them. Bought all the needed preparations which sometimes were hard to get, sometimes we made separate collections since they were not cheap. Paid for procedures, got them into the cancer ward even when it was nearly impossible. There are long waiting lists… We gave their medical histories to the best doctors in Moscow.
We even managed to get Sergey Balanov, a young cardiologist who saved people in Lugansk during the fighting and who himself had blood cancer, to Moscow with Irina Bednova’s help, but it did not help. Sergey died there.
We continue to help those who have no chance.
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