The last chance to save Danya's leg

Danya is 15. In 2013, he was diagnosed with an osteoblastic sarcoma in his left upper thigh. That year, Danya had surgery at National Cancer Institute (Kiev) to remove a tumor. Over the next two years, he took over twenty chemos, was operated on the lungs to eliminate metastasis and had a relapse but luckily got it over.


As the part of his thigh bone was removed along with the tumor, the NCI doctors installed a Straiker prosthetic implant instead. Unfortunately, that implant was not able to «grow» together with Danya’s thigh. Over two years with the Straiker, the right leg outgrew the effected left one by 7 cms and eventually Danya started suffering from the heavy spine curvature.

In June 2017, Danya was operated on at the Sytenko Institute of Spine and Joints Pathology (Kharkov) and had a MUTARS Xpand prosthesis installed. An implant of that type is able to lengthen with a limb growing but, in our case, everything went wrong. As the low part of Danya’s left thigh bone had already been heavily affected by chemos and previous surgeries, it partly crumbled during that surgery. Also there was a severe issue with a fistula over Danya’s bad leg caused by staphylococcus bacteria. What’s more, a following check-up in Sytenko Institute made in a few months after the surgery showed that the MUTARS module had broken down.


While the doctors in Ukraine suggest the leg’s amputation as the only way to help Danya, his family decided to take a second opinion and approached the Center for Correcting and Reconstructive Surgery of the Extremities (ZEM - Germany Munich). They are the professionals who know everything about the type of prosthesis Danya has, its installation and maintenance.


The German doctors recommended the following treatment plan:
- removal of the MUTARS Xpand prosthesis, debridement and cleaning of the whole exposed area and stabilization with an arthrodesis and a spacer.
- revision surgery, if infection not to be eradicated after the first step.
- implantation of a new MUTARS BioXpand II prosthesis.

In October 2018, Danya underwent a surgery lasting nine hours during which the broken prosthesis was removed, the necrotic and infected tissues were surgically debrided. The doctor also installed a temporary spacer with medicine into the bad leg to cure the contamination there.


Then, in this January, the doctor carried out a revision surgery and found that the infection had gone. It means that now Danya is able to undergo an implantation surgery. However, due to the partly crumbled thigh bone, the treatment will take a long time and a lot of money. The preliminary cost of the treatment is about EUR 250 000.


Six years of cancer therapy completely exhausted our savings and EUR 250 000 is completely beyond our financial reach, however we are not going to stop and give in, we just have no moral right to do that. How will we tell the boy who beat one of the most aggressive cancers in the last stage that now, after so many years of fighting, we have to give up because we don't have the money? How to say him that his dream to walk is a pipe dream? And how to live then with the feeling that we had a real chance to save Danya's leg but we did not even try to use it, just because decided that it would not be possible to collect that amount?

Therefore, we will go only forward, we will fight and believe that we are not alone on this path. There are a lot of kind people around the world who are ready to give a helping hand in a difficult life situation - we know it for sure! We just need to find them.