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
