Save Future Rapunzel

"I am not a boy! I am a girl – Tania!". In the yard, at the playground 4-year-old Tania gets acquainted with a new friend and explains to them why she doesn’t have hair. For more than a year she has been treated for an aggressive form of cancer – 4 stage neuroblastoma. Before like all the other girls she had her hair braided or her mom made her a ponytail. It was not necessary to persuade her to go to the kindergarten, sociable Tania loves to be with other kids. But lately her circle of friends is constantly changing, instead of the kindergarten, she has to be at the hospital. In Poltava and in Kyiv. There she made friends too but they died...

She is regularly hospitalized at the oncology departments – her small child’s body endured 6 chemo cycles, a surgery, a transplant of stem cells and a scanning with iodine isotopes. A year ago Tania had a sudden fever, pain in the belly and in the legs. The examination revealed a form of cancer that appears at birth but for years it is asymptomatic and then it is very hard to treat. Now miraculously Tania feels good, she is at home, plays with her little sister, 2-year-old Arinka, learns the alphabet, dreams of reading fairy tales. But the examination revealed deterioration of her condition – numerous metastases in the bones. The situation is extremely alarming because they grow and Tania’s life is in danger.

The doctors of the Cancer Institute recommend MIBG therapy, this method is not available in Ukraine. The treatment should start as soon as possible. In Italy, they are waiting for Tania. The estimate for treatment is 9,324.00 euros.

In the family only the father works – he is an engineer at the plant, the mother is on maternity leave, takes care of their daughters. Over the last year, Tania’s treatment cost hundreds of thousands of UAH – a huge amount for the family that had already asked everyone for the help. This big estimate, on the one hand, leads to despair but, on the other hand, gives the only chance to survive.

Tania follows obediently all the doctors’ prescriptions: MRI – means "going into the tank", CT – "looking inside", injections – "it’s quickly", chemotherapy – "lying in bed and sleeping". The main thing is that one day everything must come to an end and her hair will grow like Rapunzel’s or at least as it was before, below the shoulder blades, and then no one will consider her to be a boy.

Earlier at the UBB, we already collected funds for Tania. You can see the previous project by the link.

Name: Tetiana Rylina, 06.02.2014

City: Gorishni Plavni, Poltava region

Diagnosis: neuroblastoma