Please Help Me Save My Life and Live to See My Children Grow

My name is Nika. I am a young doctor from the Caucasus Republic of Georgia. It is a privilege to save lives and I have worked very hard and overcome many obstacles to become an anaesthetist. I have a wife and two beautiful babies that I love more than the world. I desperately want to live.

But I have a brain tumour and do not have the money to pay for treatment.

My life depends on being able to access treatment and surgery, which costs dramatically more money than I have (there are few publicly funded resources in my country to cover this). Compounding my family’s struggles, the tumour is causing mini-seizures which place my patients at risk. So I cannot currently practise medicine and have lost all income. I share more details about my story below.

My Scottish friend is helping me organize this fundraiser. I hope you can help me finance the urgent medical care I need for treatment, and I hope you can share this in your community as well.

Following are the expenses for my treatment, followed by my fuller story; I hope you have time to read about my life and work, and thank you.

I will be forever grateful for any financial help you can offer, however small.

With love, Nika

EXPENSES:

With the help of my Scottish friend and others, I am researching surgical specialists in other countries and the potential costs of treatment. I will update the fees for surgery and travel as soon as I have more information (I realise my condition may mean that I will require surgery, perhaps abroad).

Here is what I know will be necessary at this point:

•Chemo for 6 months @ $3000 per month = $18,000 / GBP 13,815

•Radiation 6 month series: $13,500 / GBP 10,360

•Living expense support for 6 months @ $1560 per month / GBP 1200 = $9,370 / GBP 7,200

Total: $ 40,860 / GBP 31,375

Please help me live.

MY STORY

I grew up in a small village in the Caucasus Republic of Georgia. When I was 11 years old a Scottish woman arrived in our village. She was trying to help Georgian social orphan children abandoned in orphanages, by finding foster families for them. One child was paralysed from the chest, and dying from injuries he had received. She was battling to save his life because in my country there were no paediatric spinal surgeons. This little boy, who speaks in the video, was 6 years old.

I tried to help her by learning English fast, making stories for him and visiting the orphanage. AND WE DID IT TOGETHER! By helping in small ways, I helped save his life. I loved that idea so much that it made my heart sing!

It was then that I decided to become a doctor. To serve my own people. With my whole heart. Ours was a poor village, education was elementary, and hardly any children managed to qualify for University. I worked day and night with extra lessons. AND I DID IT!

I battled against the odds and got into Medical School, working as a nurse to fund my medical studies. But I was passionate and happy just to be doing the job I loved.

During this time, my Scottish friend (who is helping organize this fundraiser and is in the video) brought me to UK to study facilities for disabled people. I went home from that trip with a suitcase full of medical textbooks she bought from a young British doctor who had just graduated. They were worth their weight in gold to me.

I’ve seen some terrible things in medicine, because in Georgia, medical services are not well regulated and you mostly have to pay for medical treatment. Sometimes when I was training I would work extra hours in a private clinic so that I could pay the owner to allow poor people I was treating to get medical tests.

I love life and I love medicine. I’ve been practising as an anaesthetist for 5 years, and I’ve begun to build a future. Perhaps most significantly, I met the love of my life and we have two beautiful little boys who are my whole life.

But disaster has struck. I began to have headaches and seizures and have been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. For months I was in shock and battled alone with my fears. We have a genetic predisposition to cancer in our family. During this time, my then-pregnant partner was struggling with health challenges and I feared telling her could risk her and the baby’s health. But I needed to tell someone, so I called my Scottish friend and asked her to keep it confidential.

The mini-seizures I’m having (from the tumour) mean that I was forced to leave my job as an anaesthetist and so have no income from that work. However hard I fight, my symptoms sometimes cripple me. And yet, I have to feed my children. Right now, I try to get concreting work on building sites to pay the rent. Each day is different and sometimes I’m too weak to do that. Now we live hand to mouth. Sometimes, I still get calls from clinics asking me to perform operations. But however tempting financially, I can’t take that work -- I could never put my patients at risk by doing it.

My wife and family beg me to have an operation but as a doctor I know that the location of the tumour makes it complex to treat. Probably beyond the resources available in my own country. And I have no money to pay for it.

It takes a lot for me to ask for help. I’m a private person and far more used to helping others. But I’m reaching out because if I don’t, I believe I have a maximum of 3 years to live. And more than anything in the world I just want to live and see my children grow.

My earnest prayer is to live to see my children grow. I will do everything in my power to return to practise medicine again should that be humanly possible.

I will be forever grateful for any financial help you can offer, however small.

With love, Nika