For 17-year-old Taras to be able to walk again, he needed to have an expensive structure fitted to restore his vertebrae.
Thanks to the help of philanthropists, specialists at the St Nicholas Children’s Hospital of the First Medical Association of Lviv were able to perform this life-saving operation.
Taras, a lyceum student, is an orphan. After the death of his parents, his aunt, who has three children of her own, took care of him and his brother. Taras loves football, but his biggest passion is motorbikes. The young man had an accident this year in July. He was riding a motorbike, lost control, went off the road and overturned. As a result, he suffered fractures of the spine and ribs, a head injury and other multiple injuries.
He was hospitalised at St Nicholas Hospital. Due to a pinched spinal canal, Taras could not feel his legs. Only surgery to install a special structure – a set of implants to stabilise the spine – could help. The cost of this is 100 thousand hryvnias. This is an unaffordable amount for Taras’s large foster family. Fortunately, philanthropists were willing to help. The Zaporuka Charitable Foundation, with the support of the dobro.ua platform, launched a fundraiser and then purchased the necessary medical device.
The life-saving intervention was performed by neurosurgeons from St Nicholas Hospital – Taras Mykytyn and Yuriy Kuzminsky. They had to replace a broken vertebrae in the lower back and release the trapped spinal cord. The operation lasted 4 hours and was successful. The very next day, physical therapists started working with the young man and he took his first steps after the accident. On the 5th day, Taras was discharged from the hospital. He walked home on his own two feet.
“The boy was born in a shirt. The first thing he asked us when we hospitalised him was when he would be able to go back to playing football. But with his injury, he would not even be able to walk. “On behalf of our entire medical team, I thank the Zaporuka Foundation and the dobro.ua charity platform for responding so quickly and helping us put Taras back on his feet. And also to the Synergy+ NGO for their biggest contribution and help in closing the collection,” says Taras Mykytyn, a neurosurgeon at St. Nicholas Children’s Hospital.
Taras, 17, has no plans to get behind the wheel of a motorcycle for now. He says he will ride a bicycle for now. The most important thing is that he is walking again and will be able to play football after his full recovery.
To save children with neurotrauma, hydrocephalus, brain tumours, and traumatic brain injuries, Lviv neurosurgeons use a special device called a neuroendoscope almost every day. The existing one is already exhausting its life, so a new one is needed.
So, with the support of dobro.ua, we launched a fundraiser for a neuroendoscope: we still need to raise about a million hryvnias.