When you’re 17 and you’ve got 36 rounds of chemotherapy, 28 days of radiation, surgery, depression, the loss of a close friend. Where do you get the strength to do anything?
It happened in Rzhev, in mid-December 2015. 14-year-old Katya came out of the Ice Palace, slipped on the track and did not keep her balance.
“I fell on my arms like a cat on my paws,” Katya says. — And then my right arm started hurting.
A few days before the New Year, the pain became unbearable. At night, I tried to put my hand down so that the pain would subside. I didn’t want to think about her, so I probably didn’t notice that my wrist was getting bigger.
Ice indifference
It became clear that brushing off the injury would not be easy. Katya and her mother Natalia asked for help from a local surgeon.
“Twice we took a picture, but the doctor was not even alerted,” says Natalia. — She said, smear your hand with bruise ointment.
A second visit to the surgeon did not bring clarity, as did ultrasound. But the doctor who carried out the procedure advised to consult a pediatric oncologist and do an MRI.
“After the CT scan, we were told it was bone swelling. And then we got to such a specialist that you do not want the enemy, Katya makes terrible eyes.
The oncologist of the children’s regional clinic did not consider it necessary even to look at the pictures.
“I already felt something was wrong,” Natalia recalls. And when she asked us to pay attention, she started screaming, telling her to shut up and not teach her how to work. The doctor ordered Katya to smear her hand with Vishnevsky ointment for two weeks. At the next reception, the girl got only in mid-February with a completely swollen wrist, which was burning with fire. The oncologist offered to go to the hospital and get antibiotics.
“And my mother seemed to have something clicked in my head,” Katya recalls. We took all the documents and went to Moscow.
Only in the Russian Cancer Center named after N.N. Blokhin, the girl was diagnosed with alviolar rhabdomyosarcoma of the right hand.
Stage four, metastases in the bone marrow, Natalia pauses for a moment. — The operation made no sense.
A sun named Denis.
A long, painful chemotherapy began.
“The first nine months I was like a vegetable,” says Katya. — I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to live. No one said I was going to have eighteen rounds of chemistry and twenty-eight days of radiation therapy. The doctors talked to Mom. When I found out what was coming, I didn’t know how to react. And how to endure it.
After the first two laps, Katya lost twelve kilograms and fell into a deep depression. Relatives came to her, asked her to stay, doctors came in, asked questions, volunteers were invited to participate in master classes held here, in the hall of the department. And then Denis came along.
“I was then dripping platelet mass and hemoglobin. When platelets are poured, you feel very bad: it feels like something strange gets into you and you begin to break. Analgesic injections do not help — Katya twitches from her memories. And then a boy came up to me: “Well, why are you lying there?” What’s your name? Let’s play chess! At first I thought he was just crazy. I almost turned around. What chess?
But Denis was adamant. He started looking after Katya, getting her to communicate with the other children. I didn’t give her the chance to just lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling. Denis tried his best to bring Katya back to life.
“He showed how important it is not to shut yourself up, to talk to others, to laugh. Now I realize that even my tests depended on my emotional state. When I got out of depression, thanks to Denis, they got better. And he always said to me, “Eat or you’ll die!” I ate very little, a piece in my throat. But that phrase, however rude it may seem, helped me.”
In December 2017, Denis died. The boy, who regained faith in the life of Katya and many more children from the Blokhin center, could not win his illness.
“The parents did not know how to tell us. Everyone in the hospital loved him very much. He was like the sun. Even if it was very hard for him, he never showed it and always smiled. The fact that Denis left, I learned from social networks. I don’t know how long I cried.”
Second round.
Katya left the hospital in August 2017. At the cancer center, she finished seventh and studied the entire eighth grade. And the disease receded, the tumor disappeared.
“Of course, we were warned that a relapse was possible, but we did not believe it,” Natalia recalls.
A year later, Katya underwent a planned examination. The tests were excellent.
«It was late at night, a month later,» Katya recalls. I was bathing in the shower, somehow unsuccessfully raised my hand, and something clicked in it. Touched the shoulder, a bump.
Katya tried to convince herself that she was wrong. Eventually, she might have caught a cold, and the lump is an enlarged lymph node. But her intuition didn’t fool her. Early in the morning, Katya and her mother went to Moscow, contacted a doctor and received directions for ultrasound and puncture.
“I was given eighteen more rounds of chemotherapy. I didn’t want to believe it, but I pulled myself together. I already knew I wanted to live.”
Laughter in hospital corridors
Katya steadfastly tolerated the treatment. This time, it was decided that the tumor would not only be crushed by chemotherapy, but also cut out. The operation was successful.
“To say that I remember the time in the hospital with joy, my tongue will not turn, but there was a lot of something bright,” Katya carefully selects the words. I remember we locked up in one of the offices in the evenings, chatting and laughing until two in the night. In our company there were guys in wheelchairs, and on endoprostheses, and younger and older — all very different. We were never dispersed.”
One day, a clowness girl entered Katya’s ward. She said her name was Tick-Tac.
«I’ve never liked clowns before, I didn’t understand them,» Katya says. — And her first day, too. But she communicated with the children, everyone reached for her. I listened to what they were talking about, but I didn’t give a look.”
At the time, Kate felt that the treatment had disfigured her. The girl constantly wore a wig, did makeup and still considered herself very scary.
“I even got to surgery made-up, so did not want to see myself without eyebrows and eyelashes,” smiles Katya. When I was in the hospital for the second time, I felt so bad without hair that my mother bought curls. You could walk with them for two weeks without taking them off.”
Tick-Tac came to the ward on Wednesdays. She behaved kindly and tactfully, never imposed.
“But one day I told her about makeup and that I hate being reflected in the mirror.”
And then the cute, funny Tick-Tack went up. At first she scolded Katya for saying and thinking such terrible things. And then everyone who was nearby asked if Katya was beautiful. And everyone said, «Yes, very beautiful.»
“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I remained a bald girl without eyelashes and eyebrows, but I did not seem afraid. To say goodbye that day, Tick-Tac whispered in my ear, “Remember, whatever you are, you will always be beautiful.” «Always.»
Katya began to approach the mirror more often and look at herself through the eyes of others.
“I saw in the reflection another, a beautiful man. And I said to myself, Everything that happens, you just have to survive. It will all end — hair will grow, eyebrows. It’s not scary. It was like letting me accept who I was at the time. And I’ll never forget that. In fact, her name is Valeria Pivnenko, but if it is without makeup, Katya smiles warmly. This is a rare person who knows exactly when to come, what to say, how to cheer, cheer, comfort. It feels like she can see right through us. It doesn’t matter how old someone is with you. Everyone is waiting for her – both teenagers and very young children. When she arrives, the children immediately run to her.”
Choosing life
Now Katya has returned home, but continues to take drugs in microdoses. I went to college. In the fight against the disease, she won the main prize – life. And now he decides how to handle it.
I want to take courses of makeup, manicure, master the profession of event manager. There’s a lot of plans. Maybe I want to be a TV journalist!
Before her illness, Katya loved sewing, embroidering and creating toys. And now that passion is back.
Recently I started knitting, Katya smiles. Everything I do now, I owe Tik-Tak and the artists who came to our rooms, invited to master classes, together with us sculpted candles and painted caskets. They gave me back what I really loved.”
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Orthodox stories from life
