Not yet born, Danil spent the night in the basement with me. I hid there from shelling in the last months of my pregnancy.
The result was a premature birth. The son was immediately placed in intensive care. At first, doctors believed that fluid had stagnated in the lungs, then they diagnosed a heart defect. The doctors said that there was no one to operate here, we had to go somewhere else.
My son was dying before our eyes, he did not react to those around him, his head was deformed. The money for the trip to Kharkov was collected by the whole comunity for six months. We hired an ambulance, which took us to Slavyansk, and there we met the Kharkov doctors. And only in Kharkov was the exact diagnosis established - hydrocephalus.
It was very frightening. The entire brain was filled with fluid. The only way out for those who suffer from this disease is to install a shunt that pumps fluid from the head. The implant costs tens of thousands of hryvnias. We did not have such an amount. We contacted the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation - and they helped us.
Though the doctors in Makeyevka predicted developmental retardation and assured us that the child would hardly be able to speak. But after the operation, his condition improved. He began to move, gag, and began to speak when he was less then two years old. Now my son is developing, like all his peers.
