Make Lera great again
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Dear Reader:
I welcome you to meet my dearest friend Lera Zderova, a charming, kind and smart, 30 years old girl, who is in later stages of diabetes.
Lera was born and raised in Orenburg, a town in the south of the Urals in Russia.
Like most children, she wanted to make her parents proud of her. She was lucky enough to find herself in science. At the age of 16 she attended Moscow State University, the best school one can find in Russia. However, it was at this very young age when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
This was not an easy time for her, but nevertheless she managed to keep her diabetes under control, and five years later she graduated with a Master’s degree in mathematics.
Sadly, during her PhD studies, Lera’s response to insulin became rather poor. This put her at high risk of lower-extremity amputations due to the diabetic vascular disease - something that many diabetic patients have to worry about daily. She started suffering from foot ulcers of various degrees of inflammation.
In 2018, her disease went totally out of control: she faced kidney failure and, requiring dialysis several times a week, became jobless. Apart from the emotional stress involved it put a lot of financial pressure on her family. The little money she makes working as a math tutor is far from enough to cover the medical bills. To finance three surgeries for Lera, her family borrowed 14000$. Now they are struggling to repay the debt.
Most recently, in 2019, one of her wounds got severely infected, after which Lera experienced septic shock and had to undergo a partial foot amputation surgery. She is now missing a part of her left foot and two toes of the right.
With such an advanced stage of diabetes , she has no choice but to make the treatment her full-time job. Dialysis, along with quite a few medical exams to monitor her fragile condition, require her presence in the hospital daily, while sometimes she has to visit two or three hospitals in one day. What is left from her left foot does not support her weight properly and every step she takes contributes to further bones and joint disorganization. She is in desperate need for a prosthetic foot, which would cost her nearly 8000$.
Lera is currently on the waiting list for SPK transplant - simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplant. SPK is the best treatment for kidney failure patients with diabetes; after a successful transplant, most patients no longer have to rely on dialysis and no longer need to inject insulin. SPK treatment is a chance for a better quality of life.
This fundraising is to ease the financial burden on Lera’s parents and to help her to go through the waiting period until she receives a transplant. After that , as doctors say, she can mostly return to her normal life. This, however, is not going to happen without your help. I do believe in miracles but there is always a little work to do to make them happen. We are doing our best. Please help us do a bit better.
I welcome you to meet my dearest friend Lera Zderova, a charming, kind and smart, 30 years old girl, who is in later stages of diabetes.
Lera was born and raised in Orenburg, a town in the south of the Urals in Russia.
Like most children, she wanted to make her parents proud of her. She was lucky enough to find herself in science. At the age of 16 she attended Moscow State University, the best school one can find in Russia. However, it was at this very young age when she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
This was not an easy time for her, but nevertheless she managed to keep her diabetes under control, and five years later she graduated with a Master’s degree in mathematics.
Sadly, during her PhD studies, Lera’s response to insulin became rather poor. This put her at high risk of lower-extremity amputations due to the diabetic vascular disease - something that many diabetic patients have to worry about daily. She started suffering from foot ulcers of various degrees of inflammation.
In 2018, her disease went totally out of control: she faced kidney failure and, requiring dialysis several times a week, became jobless. Apart from the emotional stress involved it put a lot of financial pressure on her family. The little money she makes working as a math tutor is far from enough to cover the medical bills. To finance three surgeries for Lera, her family borrowed 14000$. Now they are struggling to repay the debt.
Most recently, in 2019, one of her wounds got severely infected, after which Lera experienced septic shock and had to undergo a partial foot amputation surgery. She is now missing a part of her left foot and two toes of the right.
With such an advanced stage of diabetes , she has no choice but to make the treatment her full-time job. Dialysis, along with quite a few medical exams to monitor her fragile condition, require her presence in the hospital daily, while sometimes she has to visit two or three hospitals in one day. What is left from her left foot does not support her weight properly and every step she takes contributes to further bones and joint disorganization. She is in desperate need for a prosthetic foot, which would cost her nearly 8000$.
Lera is currently on the waiting list for SPK transplant - simultaneous pancreas-kidney transplant. SPK is the best treatment for kidney failure patients with diabetes; after a successful transplant, most patients no longer have to rely on dialysis and no longer need to inject insulin. SPK treatment is a chance for a better quality of life.
This fundraising is to ease the financial burden on Lera’s parents and to help her to go through the waiting period until she receives a transplant. After that , as doctors say, she can mostly return to her normal life. This, however, is not going to happen without your help. I do believe in miracles but there is always a little work to do to make them happen. We are doing our best. Please help us do a bit better.
Organizer
Gleb Smirnov
Organizer
Dübendorf, ZH