There is such an online community “oncobudny”. Its participants are women who have suffered from cancer or are fighting it right now. They are there as they can help each other, exchange experiences, contacts with doctors, diets, just words of support, in short - live. Who a year after the diagnosis, who three or five, and who ten or fifteen. They don’t think that if they couldn’t cure cancer forever, then everything was in vain and resistance is useless. If you can extend the life of at least one year, it is a whole year. 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days and 8760 hours. The story is told by Ludmila Pukhliak, founder of the community.
I didn’t seem to have told that story. Rita was a little warrior. She tried seemingly everything in the arsenal of doctors, and visited everywhere. Her cancer was constantly recurring, and she tried and found a new control. And some day 5 years ago, a friend wrote to me: "Rite needs to do a repeat histology, and its blocks (that is, samples of the tumor) remained in Lisod (Kyiv hospital), you don't know how to take them and transfer them to Moscow?" It would seem to be an easy task, but not in our own restless world. In the yard of the 16th year, there are no communications between us, except for trains - no delivery service works. The hospital refuses to give biomaterials to strangers without authorization. We are desperately looking for a way out.
The first surrendered the hospital and handed the blocks to my friend who was lying there at the time. Her mother was driving away from her and I had to do a simple thing - go out to the agreed place at the agreed time and pick up the bag. I come and wait... 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour... I freeze like a puppy. There was a crash on the track, after an hour and a half, a completely tortured woman arrives, apologizing very much for what happened in no way because of her fault.
No courier was found, so I decided that the next day I would come to the train and arrange a guide or a guide to take the package, although at that time it was terribly strictly forbidden. I wake up, and on the street what shouldn’t be on November 13 is snowfall! Shed snow, shed and shed and by evening the city stands all over. From me to the station 20 minutes by trolleybus, but the trolleybuses stopped walking, calling a taxi is useless and I, feverishly finding winter clothes, run through the hills to the subway.
I get to the station and on the way I think that everything seems so strange and complicated, as if someone wants to tell me - do you need it? I find a train and I bypass all the wagons from head to tail, I ask for every guide and I’m all rejected and smiled as if I were the worst terrorist in the world.
I’m standing on the pedestal in front of this train, all in the snow, and I’m all in the snow and I cry. I cry about everything in the world—that there is cancer, that there is war, that it’s so hard for us to hear and help someone. By a miracle I got together and stopped crying. I looked around and saw a woman who smoked before leaving the train. I don’t know what pushed me to her. But I approached and said, "Help me, take a small package with you, it is very much awaited in Moscow." She was scared at first and refused, and then for a moment so stunned, looked at me crying and asked - "what is there?" - "There are blocks from the hospital on which histology needs to be done..." - I started and got stuck - where does a normal person know about it? "You know, my friend has cancer and to get treatment, I need these things." And there happened something. It was as if a wall had collapsed between us. “Let me take them. Write my phone number.” - The number is not Russian or Ukrainian, she showed her passport, she was a citizen of either the UK or some other country, and then she quickly spoke: "I now understand what happened today. I flew to Moscow, I really need to go there, and we were put here and I had to go from the airport to the station, buy a train ticket, thank God there were seats. I smoked here and thought, “What kind of misfortune is this?” Here are you. My mother died of cancer and I understand how important it is. I’m probably here to take that package.”
I gave the package, sent the girls to Moscow contacts, the number of the wagon and the time of arrival of the train. I cried again. She walked back through the snow and thought about how surprisingly sometimes the space turns, and how many complicated intertracts happened to get this small package to Rita, which could give her another chance. I, by the way, do not know if there was anything explicit about that analysis for her, but from those events she has lived for another 2.5 years. This story changed me. It was some kind of a key point when something in me clicked and got in place - it was at that moment that I assumed that it was like something tight, but I am some detail in this picture of the world, which gets to those who were transferred from the plane to the train...