To breathe easier

Do you know why seriously ill patients often can’t lie down and even sleep in a sitting position? In many cases, the answer is simple and terrible at the same time: when sitting, it's easier to breathe. Heart failure, stroke, chronic lung disease or cancer – a lot of it can lead to breathlessness. Many patients at such a stage can no longer be cured. But you can help and start doing it before a person starts to suffocate, before "gets used" to sleep while sitting...

Our fund "specializes" in oxygen support; our wards are children and adults with different diagnoses, but a common problem: it is difficult for them to breathe, constantly or periodically. For those whose lungs or heart is damaged so much that they can’t cope with their functions, we give for free usage oxygen devices, which partially perform the functions of lungs – filter out the oxygen from the air.

In order to understand whether there is a need for the device, and also to choose the proper one, it is necessary to find out in what condition this person is now, what level of oxygen in the blood (saturation) it has, how big a problem is and whether it is constant. At this diagnostic stage, we are assisted by simple devices – finger pulse oximeters. They are put on a finger as a clothespin, and determine the saturation and pulse. Later, when the patient receives an oxygen concentrator, the same pulse oximeter will help to determine when to connect the device and at what power. To put it shortly, to do without this little device in our work – no way.

At the moment, we need help to replenish our warehouse, as more and more wards are getting support, and the pulse oximeters we already have are not enough to work this year.