Artem and ants

He's 4. The last 10 months he lived in a hospital with his mom. He's still alive thanks to doctors and donors: every 3 days somebody else’s blood is being transfused to Artem. Because his own blood is useless. First, his body got covered by hematomas that would appear for no apparent reason and wouldn’t go away for a long while. Parents became alarmed. In Chernihiv’s regional hospital the boy was given a wrong diagnosis and for over a month he received an unnecessary treatment with hormones. Only later doctors diagnosed an acquired aplastic anemia – a very serious rare disease phase.

Artem is squatting and peering, focused, at the scarce autumn grass. With his childishly clumsy moves of little fingers he’s picking something out of there.

- ‘What’s there?’ I’m asking him.

- ‘Ants,’ the boy replies matter-of-factly, not getting distracted from his business. He places his catch in a jar for medical tests.

- ‘What are you going to do with them?’

Artem casts a surprised look at me as if saying: ‘what a silly question, lady’ and takes a peek with genuine interest inside the jar where two large ants are rushing around in a state of utter panic.

Ants are wonderful insects. Their family is a highly-organized society where everyone performs an important and strictly defined role. Nursemaids, scouts, hunters, guards, soldiers – if at least one of these kinds of workers would suddenly forget about their duties, life of the entire ant colony would be gravely endangered.

Such as Artem’s life. His body has sustained a similar failure: the bone marrow ‘forgot’ about its functions and stopped producing the necessary amount of blood cells – erythrocytes supplying oxygen to the body, leucocytes responsible for fighting infections and thrombocytes which help coagulate blood. In other words, instead of blood the boy has a turbid useless liquid flowing in his veins.

Doctors said right from the beginning that the chances of healing Artem by therapy alone are slim: 15% at the most. But the parents decided to give it a try, for they had no money to pay for a bone marrow transplantation surgery. Therapy didn’t help, so the only hope left is for the surgery.

But the chance to survive after successful surgery grows substantially, up to 70-90%. In cases like this the best thing to do is to transplant from a sibling, but Artem is the only child in the family. Transplantations from unrelated donors (who include biological parents) are not performed in Ukraine.

But Artem knows nothing about it, as he knows nothing about a complex organization of the ant family. He quickly loses interest in them and immediately begins playing another game.

Laboriously clutching at rungs, Artem is climbing up the jungle gym in the hospital’s children’s playground. Yesterday, he received another blood transfusion; all indicators are normal, and the boy can afford to crawl, run and jump. When his blood runs out of erythrocytes, Artem quickly gets tired and begins to choke. That’s why his parents still keep the baby carriage, for it’s hard to carry an exhausted four-year-old son in arms.

Having climbed up to the very top, Artem kneels and crawls forward on traverse bars on all fours. His mom who safeguards all these stunts barely noticeably sighs. Had it not been for regular blood transfusions, her son’s legs would’ve been immediately covered by hematomas after this game.

At the edge of the jungle gym Artem hangs down on the stretched arms and looks at his mom, cunningly narrowing his not childishly expressive eyes. Another moment, and he’ll let his hands open.

It’s a dangerous game. When the boy’s blood is low on thrombocytes, the blood is virtually not coagulating. And any injury may become fatal.

His mom knows what that means. One day, after another intravenous infusion she had to sit 12 hours by Artem’s bed and keep closed, with her finger, an almost invisible but constantly bleeding hole from needle.

Today, she manages to catch her son while he’s still in the air. Putting him on the ground, mother furtively touches the boy’s forehead. She has long learned to determine by touch the critical body temperature for her son.
With aplastic anemia the body temperature is always slightly higher than normal. It has to be measured every hour. If it reaches 38ºС, the transfused blood cells will simply burn and everything will have to be repeated again.
Artem is climbing up the jungle gym again. He seldom stays in one place, for that’s his age.

Artem’s laughing, happily and easily.

‘I will miss you, lady,’ he tells me before we part.

An open and trusting, Artem does not feel shy before strangers.

That’s what it is. Whether he will live depends on sympathy of strangers.

We're going to raise on UBB website a part of the necessary funds to treat a child.

Name: Artem S. Rybalka, born 07/02/2010

Location: Chernigiv region

Diagnosis: severe acquired aplastic anemia