Please help my MOM to beat cancer

Back in February, my mom started feeling pain in her hip bone and hence difficulty walking. She went to a local clinic in Atyrau, Kazakhstan where doctors misdiagnosed her with arthrosis. They prescribed an anti-inflammatory gel and let her go home. However, her condition hasn't improved ever since but rather was getting worse. In August, we learned the shocking news that my mom had stage 4 cancer of unknown origin. By that time it has already spread to her brain, bones, lungs, and liver.

Pain in the hip was the first symptom indicative of cancer. Not only had our doctors missed malignancy the first time we saw them, but they also failed to detect where it started. In addition, little could they offer to treat the disease.

Unfortunately, healthcare let alone cancer service is outdated and poorly organized in our country. There is a lack of qualified oncologists and cancer medications, and no up-to-date radiotherapy equipment available in Kazakhstan. In general, most healthcare providers here are incompetent and do not inspire trust.

Frustrated by the situation we collected all our savings and flew to Istanbul, Turkey to immediately get help. We spent two weeks in the Anadolu Clinic where professional oncologists examined my mom and performed complete diagnostics of her condition. We finally learned that what she has is called advanced medullary thyroid carcinoma. This is a rare and aggressive type of thyroid cancer that develops asymptomatic and often goes unnoticed until in its last stages. Luckily, an FDA-approved tyrosine kinase inhibitor Cabozantinib is available to treat this disease. The drug is manufactured by a German pharmaceutical company Exelixis under the name Cometriq. The cost of Cometriq 20 mg/ 80mg is 5500 euros per package which is enough for one month. To start with, my mom was prescribed 140 mg of Cometriq each day for the next three months. She was also able to receive three sessions of stereotactic radiosurgery before we ran out of money and had to discharge her from the clinic.

We are now continuing the treatment at home with remote monitoring from their side. However, it is not working for us because both complications of the disease and side effects of the drug require a physical examination. Therefore, whenever we have complaints, they send us to seek additional medical care in local clinics.

Getting medical help in Kazakhstan is a complete nightmare. We can’t just go and see the right specialist we need. Instead, we have to visit several other doctors and deal with tons of unnecessary paperwork first. Each of these doctors is located in different buildings and these buildings are so old they have no elevator installed. This makes my mom face an even greater barrier to accessing medical care since she can’t physically use stairs. Furthermore, the end specialist we need is usually booked for weeks ahead and neither priority nor at-home checkup is provided for patients like her.

However, having diagnostic findings and medical conclusions at hand is half the battle. It takes extra time to translate them from the local language to Turkish so that doctors in Anadolu Clinic could assign a treatment. Needless to say that the medications they prescribe do not exist in our country and we have to search for their alternatives. Sometimes there is no alternative at all so we have to order them abroad and wait even more till they’re delivered. As you can see the whole process is so time-consuming and nerve-racking that at this point we are on verge of falling into despair.

In two months we will have no medication left. Cometriq is not registered in Kazakhstan so our government offers no financial support on this matter. We will have to purchase it on our own throughout the whole course of treatment. We are also supposed to have our next PET-CT scanning in November but we cannot afford to travel back to Turkey by that time. Neither do we have a PET-CT scan where we live. The only option is to travel to a different city and get a delayed scanning in December as no earlier date is available there. This is the bitter truth about how our government disregards cancer patients.

It’s heartbreaking to see a loved one suffer from such a disabling condition without getting appropriate help. Her back hurts when she sits or lies for too long. She is having random memory loss and needs assistance with day-to-day tasks. She also has uncontrollable coughing which intensifies at night and bothers her sleep. She hence requires hospital stay with constant medical supervision and does not deserve the devil-may-care attitude she's getting here. No one does. If only had we enough financial resources, we'd move abroad for the whole course of treatment. We believe that staying around experienced and knowledgeable doctors who know what to do would alleviate the chances of her survival.

The budget required for such treatment is way beyond our means. We hardly need to say that hospital care, medications, therapies, and diagnostic tests in a paid department cost a huge amount of money. We are a small family of average income with two adults currently working full-time. My sister is temporarily on leave without pay to care for our mom.

We don't know how long she's been sick, but we lost enough time and cannot waste any more.

Therefore, this fundraising is a cry for help to save our beloved mom’s life. She has always been a caring mother for the three of her сhildren and a great mentor for plenty of her students. She spent 40 years of her life teaching and nurturing kids at a local secondary school. Hardly had she retired when this terrifying illness came on. Her dream is to see her youngest child marry and raise her future grandkids. Please help her dream come true. She deserves to grow old with grace and dignity.

We’re here to ask for your kind donations to contribute to my mom’s early recovery. Any amount of financial support would be greatly appreciated. If you wish to help by other means, feel free to contact us directly.

May God bless all the sick with good health!