On a call a heart

In 2014 at the festival of advertising "Cannes Lions" one of the main prizes went to a social video called "Dear Future Mother". In it, 15 young people with Down syndrome are treated as if on behalf of unborn children to their future mothers. They say that the life of such a mother will be very different. Sometimes sad, sometimes cheerful, sometimes very bustling. But it certainly will be complete, because how can be the empty life of a mother who is raising a beloved child?

A video like this in Europe are often shown to women, pregnant children with Down syndrome in perinatal centers or maternity homes, to cheer them up and show that they are not alone. In Ukraine, everything happens differently. In Ukraine, mothers of such children have often advised boarding schools - they say, there the child will be better, you still can not cope. That is why in orphanages we have so many children with Down syndrome. Children, from which actually grow great guys: they study, work, are shot in commercials for "Cannes Lions".

Two-year-old Lisa Grosheva in this sense is very lucky. Her mother Tatyana did not listen to anyone. She took her daughter home to never part with her. And so it would be for them to live together in a small apartment in Nikopol, to go to the playground every day, to buy flowers in the spring, in the winter the Christmas tree and tangerines, to laugh when Lisa smiles for the first time, to kiss her before going to bed, and then she herself sits in the kitchen and to drink tea. So to them and to live, in a word, if not noise in the heart.

"Lisa is a very welcome and desired child for me. It so happened that I gave birth to her and educate her alone," says Tatiana, the girl's mother. "And, despite all our troubles and problems, we are the happiest in the world, because she has me, and I have her."

After birth, when Lisa was one month old, the doctors heard suspicious noises in the girl's heart. They said that we need to show the child to the cardiologist. Examination of the cardiologist revealed in Lisa congenital heart disease - defect of the interatrial septum. This often happens with children with Down syndrome. In the district polyclinic, Liza was discharged to the Amosov National Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery. Tetiana hoped that the diagnosis would be a mistake, that everything would be fine. But the diagnosis was confirmed...

Now Lisa has so far not much to do: she needs to eat, walk, run, smile to her mother, it's funny to wave with her hands and hide. But even these simple children's affairs are given to her with great difficulty: Lisa, quickly gets tired, often sick, can not live without medication at all. Little Lisa's heart all the time is full of blood, to such an extent that not every child's heart and children's vessel can cope. Because of this, Lisa's lungs and all her other organs suffer from a lack of oxygen. To save her can only surgery on the heart, which must be carried out as soon as possible since the defect is constantly increasing, the load on the heart is increasing.

Fixing Lisa's heart will be very carefully, through the artery will deliver the opening device - occluder - directly to the interatrial septum. And there the folded "umbrella" will open and completely close the defect. Such operations last no more than half an hour. And in a few days, Lisa and her mom will be at home. They will make an operation for a government account. But they must pay for the occluder, which will close the defect. And Tatiana has no such money, she alone brings up Lisa. So it happens very often: at some point, you need to hurry, then to have the opportunity for a long time not to rush anywhere, look at the falling asleep girl and without hurrying to drink tea in the kitchen of a small Nikopol apartment.

Name: Hrosheva Yelyzaveta, 21.01.2015

City: Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region

Diagnosis: congenital heart defect – atrial septal defect