Very ill "bunny" Zhenia

Zhenia Zaiats from Stadnytsia village in Kyiv region will turn one only this June. He didn’t learn to walk and didn’t learn to talk yet, but he already learned to endure horrible injections and has undergone five chemotherapy sessions. Relapsing acute monoblastic leukemia is Zhenia’s deadly oncological disease that cannot be treated in Ukraine, because no clinic in Ukraine does transplantation of hematopoietic stem cells from unrelated donors. We are going to fix Zhenia’s bone marrow in a clinic in Pisa, Italy. It costs 120 thousand euros, an amount impossible to raise without charitable help.

- One, two, three, four, five, here bunny comes for a drive. Zhenia, are you a bunny or a cub?

The bunny-cub in a funny blue hat with flaps gives me a cute yet wary smile, getting used to a new acquaintance. Getting used is not that hard: since the very birth the boy got to know dozens of doctors and nurses of all kinds.

At first, the 21-year-old Inna Zaiets was told a wrong pregnancy length. 2-3 weeks post-mature, Zhenia ‘set up’ his mom for a torturous three-day delivery. Of course, he swallowed amniotic fluid; of course, he received birth asphyxia; and of course, he had to endure reanimation that was painful for all. But he survived.

After being discharged, the newborn Zhenia’s breathing suddenly became very bad. The infant had to be trusted to doctors again. The doctors looked at Zhenia, examined him and stunned his parents with ‘heart disease’. Well, what can we do, the parents thought and began treating the son.

After his second discharge from the hospital in October of last year, Zhenia’s breathing became normal but the boy’s temperature was constantly abnormally high. Zhenia’s new acquaintances in the same white and green smocks took tests and then finished his parents off with the diagnosis of ‘acute monoblastic leukemia’ (blood cancer). Bang-bang.

But the hunter comes along

And fires at the bunny from the rifle

Bang-bang! Oh, Oh, Oh!

Poor bunny is going to die!

The acute monoblastic leukemia is a very common hunter going after children’s lives. The term ‘acute’ means rapid progress of the disease, the term ‘monoblastic’ means that immature cells providing the basis for the disease are monoblasts, i.e. predecessors of monocytes. Renewing themselves and accumulating in bone marrow, blast cells obstruct the development and functioning of normal blood cells.

These tumor cells may also accumulate in bones and affect skin, gums, liver, spleen and central nervous system.

- ‘Ma-a-a!’ Zhenia screams in a high-pitch, loud voice.

- ‘That’s the way he lets us know he wants to eat’, explains Oleksandr, the boy’s father.

At the moment, the demanding Zhenia is very joyous and energetic, tries to get on the feet himself, is crawling around the apartment ‘as an awl’ (in his father’s words), plays around and gets on the parents’ nerves. In a word, he lives. The mom takes care of the son while the dad, an auto mechanic, is doing his best to raise a cosmic amount for the surgery.

Three weeks ago Zhenia was discharged from the hospital back to freedom. Behind him are five chemotherapy sessions and a relapse during the fourth. The boy is presently in remission, and we don’t know how much longer he will last and how much time we still have to make it to a bone marrow transplantation surgery.

The steadfast, stubborn, hardy bunny Zhenia doesn’t know yet how the old nursery rhyme about the hunter and his prey ends according to the author of this verse Fyodor Miller. He doesn’t know and cannot do many things yet. Usually, children have long and interesting life lying ahead of them, not blood cancer. We still have the chance to rewrite the verse the way we like it.

Bang-bang! But he missed,

And bunny Zhenia ran away

When the bunny was brought home,

He turned out to be alive.

Name: Evgeniy A. Zaiats, 08/06/2014 p.

Location: Kyiv region, Stadnytsia village

Diagnosis: acute monoblastic leukemia