I am a prisoner in four walls: help me out!

"I am ashamed to ask. But it is already hard to move, I am simply exhausted. I suffocate. And I'm 21 years old," Yura writes. He also writes that he graduated from the technical college and he wants to look for work. And that he is not ready to be prisoned in four walls chained to a power outlet. But now there is no other way out for him: his lungs do not work and the oxygen caddy breathes instead of them. It helps very well, but there is no battery and you couldn’t go out: the oxygen caddy is powered only by the mains. Yura kindly asks us to buy a portable oxygen caddy for him, which he can take and go out without restraint.

"I want to lead an active life, go out as I did earlier, and live big. I can hardly walk a couple of dozen meters without additional oxygen. I want to live", Yura writes. Yura’s family learned very late that the reason for weaker health than his peers have is in a serious genetic disease of cystic fibrosis. The boy was diagnosed correctly only at the age of 17, only from that moment, the parents began to look for information and gradually to understand what support therapy should be, how patients with such a disease generally live. They found out that it is possible to live, but you need a lot: to take many medications daily in the form of tablets and inhalations, do the sets of exercises and take special procedures, have a special high calorie diet, purchase a whole list of equipment. It costs tens of thousands of hrivnyas. And it is just impossible for an ordinary family.

He was a usual boy before the diagnosis was made. He was slightly behind in growth and weight from classmates. He was playing football for about 7 years, had a dream to become a football player like all kids did. But the doctors did not give a certificate of health, the heart can’t bear such loads anymore, and the cough did not allow playing. “I graduated from the technical college, but it was difficult – I had to travel 45 km in one direction, it took an hour and a half to reach the destination, but I managed. Now it's getting worse…", Yura writes.

We don’t know how it will be in the future. But we know that it is possible to live with the cystic fibrosis. Let Yura get a chance to live!

Name: Zakharov Yurii, 24.04.1997

City: Zmiiv, Kharkiv region

Diagnosis: cystic fibrosis