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Nastya Zhigalik

News

5.01.2009 We have sad news. Nastya suddenly died on January 1. During the last years, she could not receive treatment at our pediatric hospital, being over 18, and she waited for kidney transplantation at the Institute of Transplantology.
Nastya was a talented painter, especially interested in icon painting. She had serious plans and fine professional prospects. It is very painful to think that everything stopped so suddenly. God save the soul of this courageous and optimistic person.

4.04.2006 Nastya Zhigalik has been waiting for a compatible donor kidney for almost a year. Sergei P. is ready to donate the entire remaining sum for Nastya's surgery. So we stop the fundraising for Nastya. Sergei, thank you very much for your support!

Please help me!

My name is Nastya Zhigalik. I am 18. Now I am at the Russian Children's Clinical Hospital, at the Kidney Transplantation Department. For three years, my only hope was an operation. My first transplantation of donor kidney took place when I was 15, but after three months it was rejected, and I was taken to the intensive care unit. The doctors struggled for me, literally brought me back to life, and then there was a second transplantation... which also failed. Since I have been under dialysis all the time, I have got rapidly developing osteoporosis. I can no more walk by myself, only move in a wheelchair. My only hope is yet another kidney transplantation. Earlier, before all of this started, I had been an art school student and had dreamed of becoming a painter. Oh my God, how silly and naive I had been!
During these three years, I have lost everything but not my talent. It is the only thing left to me now. Here, at the hospital, I have painted several icons. Now my best dream is to study at an institute in order to become an icon painter. But one can study only when one lives, and now I am slowly dying. Half a year is what is left to me now. Half a year at the most. And I lost my last hope on May 20, 2005, when I turned eighteen. Because it means that I may not stay at a child hospital any more. But the terrible problem is that transplantations to adults have been interrupted in Russia for the time being [translator's note: after a public scandal with one of the transplantation clinics, the legal grounds for organ transplantations in Russia are not altogether clear]. And I have no time to wait in my condition.
The administration of the hospital allowed us to have an operation here. But the inevitable rule is that we will have to pay for it. Each day of treatment will cost 5500 roubles (about $200), and I'll have to spend 2 to 3 months at the hospital.
My grandmother is also a doctor. She has spent all these three years with me. Over the years of my illness, she has lost her husband, her apartment and her job. All her life has turned into struggle for my survival. Please help us and give me a chance.

Nastya's paintings:

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