Who steals Sonia's life

Sonia has passed away. Our condolences to her parents and relatives. She is 13. She draws flowers in warm letters to soldiers and weaves bracelets for ‘torturer’ doctors. She caresses her mom’s arm when she cries. She feels sorry for everyone and calms them down. She has acute myeloblastic leukemia, piercing look, thin hands and very tender voice. The cancer she has is so aggressive that the only thing that can defeat it is a successful BMT from unrelated donor. Diseases like that are not treated in the poor village of Khrystynivka in the Cherkasy Oblast. Transplantations from unrelated donors cannot be done in Ukraine. But we can try to save the girl in Barcelona. What we need is 130 thousand euros.

- ‘Sonia, what do you dream about in general, I mean, besides recovering?’

- ‘What can I dream about? I just want to get out of here, as soon as I can’, Sonia laughs.

Since last year’s December Sonia Stelmakh does not leave the box in Cherkasy Hospital’s cancer department. In the new, 7th grade she went to school for two weeks only.
Because of the lung disease, Sonia had to deal with doctors and hospitals since her infancy. She liked salutary white smocks and dreamed about treating others in adult life. But now, she doesn’t even want to hear about doctors. See, they can treat by inflicting torturous pain. Everything began in the summer when the girl checked in the city hospital for scheduled examination and treatment (she has congenital lung disease). Regular tests looked suspicious, and further examinations revealed ‘myelodysplastic syndrome’ which, come winter, has mutated into blood cancer. Therapy will not help Sonia anymore; she needs transplantation surgery, the medics said.

That’s because her bone marrow no longer does what it’s supposed to do.

- ‘Say, you are Sonia or Sophia? How do you like better?’

- ‘I’m khovrashok, that’s how dad calls me’, Sonia-Sophia-Khovrashok is laughing again.

Smile is the only thing left from the former Sonia, Sonia without cancer. Just look at her photos and imagine: where you see thin, darkened skin wrapping bold skull of a thin girl, there once were chestnut, almost African-like little curls. They are waving, tangling, covering her shoulders. Sonia even wanted to cut her disobedient curls to feel less pain when brushing them. But one early morning they simply disappeared, and she no longer had to brush them. It was a real tragedy.

Sonia’s dark eyebrows run down, repeating the contour of her expressive eyes. Before cancer, her playful black eyes shone brightly, but now, they are dim. Since December, they have been reflecting only the hospital box and sad grey window with nothing happening beyond it.

Chemotherapy, its consequences and constant blood transfusions are the life not visible on the other side of the window. But one can hear it all too well inside the hospital. Every day Sonia hears the screaming of other children who cannot stand disease.

Sonia’s bronze skin became grey and yellow. Chemicals destroy her beautiful teeth. Fungus disfigures her expressive thin lips, covering them with a thick crust that turns green. Her thin neck flows into not a dress but a plaster which covers painful subclavicular venous catheter.

Cancer. That cancer steals Sonia’s beauty, disfigures her face and future memories of childhood. It overshadows everything that was before and everything that could be after. But Curly Sonia can grow and learn to dance tango, talking in dance about the sea and faraway Spain where they saved her life. Or, she may not live through to see help and die.

Every day, cancer sucks life out of Sonia. It doesn’t care that she is 13. But we do.

This project was canceled, the amount collected is 51 311 UAH. The funds were disposed of in accordance with the Rules, Principles, and Procedures of the Ukrainian Philanthropic Marketplace (UBB) International Charitable Fund and the decisions of the Project Donors.

Name: Sofia Y. Stelmakh, born 11/01/2002

Location: Cherkasy region

Diagnosis: secondary acute myeloid leukemia