Rehabilitation of a lifetime. Second stage

Seven years ago, my only son, Sasha, was poisoned by thallium. This is a heavy metal that causes irrecoverable consequences in a human body such as cerebral oedema, necrosis of nerve cells, disability and even death. Sasha was growing up as a smart and sociable guy. He was majoring in programming.

However, when Sasha was 19 years old, his “friend”, the internship doctor, gave him water to drink, which was diluted with thallium... Sasha was at the point of death for a long time. It is not so simple to detect thallium in a human body - there are a few toxicological laboratories in Ukraine. However, no one could foresee the poisoning! The “friend”, who knew the reason of Sasha’s state, kept silent...

His confession could radically change the method of treatment. This is because an ordinary activated carbon is the antidote for thallium. One and a half month later toxicological examinations were conducted, and the permissible content of thallium was exceeded by 113 times...

During this time, under the influence of thallium Sasha became speechless, the parietal and temporal brain regions were affected, the cerebellum atrophied. He lied silent, with his eyes opened, because even the eyelids were paralyzed. He became an invalid of the first group A indefinitely. Then I took him home. In 2009, our great struggle for the right to live began. I built a rehabilitation centre. Thallium killed too many nerve cells, but left Sasha a bright mind and the desire to move on.

Today, Sasha with a great difficulty but still can move independently around the apartment, holding with his hands on to the handrails along the walls. Sasha spends free from daily physical activities time on the computer. Now he learns to simulate in the program 3D max. Despite my and my wife’s efforts, unfortunately, it is too early to talk about the full recovery of our son.

In general, it is not known, whether he can live without outside assistance. His body is recovering, but it requires a lot of material costs. For seven years the resources of our family have been exhausted – we had to sell three-bedroom flat in the centre of Odessa, a car, and move into a simpler house - what is most important is that Sasha has a hope to get on his feet again. I hope very much that with the help of good people, our family will be able to raise funds for further rehabilitation and treatment of our only son.

Name: Alexander Zelinsky, December 1, 1989

Location: Odessa

Diagnosis: Toxic encephalopathy (thallium poisoning in 2009). Toxic polyneuropathy. Bulbar syndrome. Sluggish tetraparesis Wed. degree. Easy-CSF hypertensive syndrome. Violation of self-service functions 2-3 tbsp.