Life is sometimes grey, sometimes yellow

Do you know the situations when you think that you would donate your kidney for someone. Well, I would do it, but it would not be useful. Seven years ago, in one of the regular phone conversations with my sister (we do not live in the same city) she told me: "Sale suffers from leukemia". It sounded as if she was saying: "It is going to rain tomorrow". Then it came the moment in life when everything stopped for a second and it seemed to you that the planet did not move, and you were vfloating in the space and there was not anything you can hold to.

I was terrified and it seems to me that I the same feeling lasted for another seven years. Sale, my older nephew, who is now 26 years old, suffered from the most diffucult form of leukemia. After almost two years of struggle the only way for him to survive was the transplantation of the bone marrow, which was conducted in Rome four years ago. We have never talked about it a lot, but Sale told me once: "The people around me were dying, and I survived thanks to my head". Six months ago the illness returned. Sale is now in Rome and the new struggle for life is ahead of him. The therapy is underway, the treatment comes next, and then if nothing is effective the new transplantation of the bone marrow will be conducted.

I was born when my parents were in their old age, and my mother got my sister and brother in her young age, so I grew up in a very unusual family. Unusual only when it is judged by the merits of the usual social norms. As the great writer Dusko Radovic used to say"Those who are capable of loving, should not do anything else".  This was the case with my sister and brother, and the latter is, unfortunately, not with us anymore. When Sale survived thanks to, as he said, "his own head", it was only because of the endless love of his dearest ones. But, today, their love is not enough. 

The Institute for Health Insurance of Serbia aproved the costs of the new treatment in Rome because it is the only place when the treatment can be conducted, but it implies only the payment of the hospital stay.

The long and hard struggle is ahead of him and I believe that he will win it. My sister is accompanying Sale because such a hard illness requires someone to follow a patient. The problem is that the stay in Rome requires extremely high costs of living. The seven years of struggle with this disease has exhausted all of members of the family, both emotionally and financially, and they need help. For instance, only to switch on the TV in the hospital room requires 150 euros, let alone the costs of transport, food and the other medicines. 

Those who know that I am a journalist would surely ask me why I do not turn to someone for help directly when I know different kinds of people? I do not do it for two reasons. First, because I would never misuse my job, and, second reason is that I would never want to put either someone else or myself in an embarrassing situation if someone can not or, simply, does not want to help.

I am aware of the fact that nowadays life in Serbia is not at all easy to anyone, but I also know that perhaps we can not change the circumstances but we can by our deeds makes the world a better place. I am trying my best every day to do it.

And, as I have said in the beginning, I would donate my kidney, but it would not be useful. The only thing I can do is to kindly ask you to help if you can, and if you can not or do not want to do it due to any reason to go and hug the person you love, hug this person tight and do not let him or her for a loooong time.

You can pay the money into the account of Sale's father western union:

Petar Grujin 

+381611185301
Novi Sad
Serbia