Cherished dream of women with breast cancer

On November 15 another volunteer was organization officially registered in Ukraine, Donna. It unites about 400 women from 15 oblasts. In their words, these women found themselves tossed out from the social ocean, left on a deserted island. Many lost their jobs, the men they loved, and friends even before they realized what had actually happened. In every case the reason was the same: breast cancer and attendant surgery.

“We have long been written off, discarded, and forgotten all about,” says one of them, Larysa Oleksandrivna, actually the founder of the future All-Ukrainian Organization of Disabled Women. “Medical regulations refer our disease to the general category and many are refused disability status or are given one for only a couple of years. After that one has to start from scratch, calling at offices, begging and crying, feeling desperately helpless. Getting a job? But how? Some women after radical mastectomy cannot move unaided. My right hand is practically incapacitated, and I have frequent fits of dizziness. But when I mustered the strength and came to the polls with my husband on last year’s presidential election my name was not on the list. Does it mean I no longer exist so far as the state is concerned?”

Larysa Oleksandrivna sustained two surgeries: mastectomy and another operation because of a careless nurse who, when drawing puss from the healing wound, punctured an artery. After that her life has been daily torture. The scar tissue hurts, because of a sutured artery which is gradually shrinking, the right side of her body is swelling. Her right hand is practically paralyzed; she cannot even carry a spoon to her mouth. “The medical staff would not even apologize,” she recalls bitterly. “On the third day after the second surgery I was released, perhaps because they were afraid I would die in the hospital and they did not want that much trouble. I am still not sure the doctors gave me the right treatment that time...”

Today, this courageous woman has two principal concerns. The first is the recently registered organization. Another is personal. After working for the Ukrtiutiunprom [Ukrainian Committee for the Tobacco Industry] for twenty years, eventually holding an important post, she cannot get her government pension. Needless to say, she has knocked on countless office doors and found them locked. She has applied to the Ministry of Health and district social security department. Nothing. Two years ago she received a money order from the Ministry of Social Protection. Titled “single pecuniary aid,” it amounted to 30 hryvnias. She rejected it.

It was like a slap in the face. An operation that could help her is practiced at the Cuban capital and costs $7,916. To buy 2 prostheses (UAH 150 each), a brassier, and a special corset (UAH 79 and 95, respectively), she had to sell her bedroom furniture. And things like that must be bought regularly. Add here medication and a special diet.

In a word, she has to rely on her own resources. Larysa Oleksandrivna made an inquiry at the prosthetic center and received 131 addresses of women with similar impairments. She sent letters and in forty cases the reply was “addressee deceased.” The rest were willing to cooperate. They had their first meeting on June 30, attended by about 150. They wrote a letter to the Presidential Administration, requesting assistance. No response, but they were not discouraged. The second meeting was attended by officials from the oncohematological polyclinic, City Board of Medical and Social Experts, Disabled People’s Social Relief Fund, and other organizations. They were visited by managers of private firms offering excellent medications in return for head-spinning sums. A young couple came, offering to look after the infirm, in return for a will bequeathing an apartment. Clairvoyants also visited, offering help in return for handsome fees... In the end, the women have only one sponsor: Social Rehabilitation Center of the Afghan Veterans’ Union that has donated breast prostheses. Larysa Oleksandrivna believes the hardships are temporary; they will find people of means and with kind hearts.

I do not think I have to explain why I have never mentioned this woman’s last name. Another woman from the same organization admitted that their ordeal is primarily a moral burden, a horrifying experience no one is willing to share; a shock one is ashamed of discussing. “Thinking back,” says Iryna Volodymyrivna, “I try to determine who I am now. I am practically dead, so far as the oncologists are concerned; I have a clean bill of health in the eyes of all those boards of medical and social experts; I am afflicted with a dangerous ill for my friends who want to avoid me. I am a heavy burden on my relatives. I am unemployed, and I have a minor son and a 74-year-old mother. What do I actually have to my name? My pension. The medications at the drugstore are not in my possession. There are memories and lack of contact with the outside world, along with a sense of my being unwanted and unneeded. Above all, it is solitude that gnaws away at my soul. Yet I do not feel doomed. I believe that there is someone somewhere who can heal this disease. And there is a strong desire to survive, so I can help others like me. I want to turn all the minuses in my life into pluses with the help of our organization. We have found one another. To serve a good cause, I hope.”