I asked my cousin to write a summary of his journey with Crohns disease. He is an intelligent person. He loves literacy and has written books in Portuguese. A kind person and loving person. Unfortunately the medicine he needs to take cost about 3 thousand dollars each application. I decided to try to gather donations to see if we can provide a couple months of his medicine, so he can have something everyone should have a basic need…. Medicine. Is it a dream to raise so much money? Send enough money for a year of applications? Maybe it is a dream, but I am going to try to reach as many hearts we can! If you could share to your friends and family and each person donated a dollar or too we may be able to help him get his medicine for the next year!

Would you have some time to read this?

 

Hello, my name is Vinicius André, I live in the state of Paraná (Brazil), I’m 29 years old and 12 years ago I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease - an immunosuppressive, chronic (no cure) disease that affects the entire digestive tract, especially the small intestine. Symptoms of the disease include vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, weight loss, fever, and in many cases, when not treated properly, can lead to more serious complications such as intestinal obstruction and hospitalization.

 

Emotional state, because it’s an immune system related disease, affects the active periods of the disease. At the age of 17, right after my mother's death, I started to present symptoms. In the same year, after a surgery I discovered the diagnosis, starting the treatment with anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressants: Mesalazine and Azathioprine (provided by SUS - Brazilian Unified Health System, free of charge). Two years later, when I was 19, I needed to have emergency surgery due to an obstruction, removing 27in of small intestine. I continued the treatment, after the surgery, and in 2019 I ended up having another obstruction, a little more serious, with the removal of two intestinal segments and two enteroplasties. Due to the severe state of malnutrition that I was in, I was hospitalized for four weeks, and this same year I started using an immunobiological (more effective drugs) to treat the disease, the Infliximab (also provided for free in Brazil).

 

After a few months of application (the drug was intravenous), I discovered after an anaphylactic shock in the hospital that I had developed resistance to the drug, making me allergic. So, a change of medication was requested, for another immunobiological that had a different mechanism of action, the Vedolizumab. The drug is not released for free for Crohn's disease in Brazil, costing approximately R$18,000.00 a 300mg ampoule - or $3,400. The ampoules are intravenous, and applied at weeks: 0, 2, 6, and then every 8 weeks.

 

Living only with my father working and receiving $400, and with my debilitated health affecting my quality of life and my professional career (in the middle of the year I had to withdraw from teaching English to children CLIL - Content and language integrated learning), costs with specific food (liquid oral diets, nutritional formulas), paying for the treatment is unfeasible. Three years ago, I requested through the legal system that the treatment be allowed, but so far, I have been denied in every way. This year I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, being one of the factors that intensified my crises in the last months. Despite presenting reports from three different doctors, the Brazilian justice system has not granted me the medicine, and every day it gets more complicated to look for ways to treat the disease, since the crises are more intense, and I am again undernourished. If you have read this far, and can help in any way, with information about treatments, medications, how to get this somehow, I will be very grateful, from all my heart! Living with a chronic disease, without proper treatment (since before the pandemic started) has been a physical and mental challenge. Thank you!