I haven’t written anything new for a while, because all sorts of things happened and we didn’t know if my mother could attend a transplant surgery after all – there was one moment when I wanted to deactivate the donation, but now there’s new hope.

We found a decent dialysis center here in Timisoara that she currently attends for about three weeks – they offer free transport and vital medication, also for free.

Why did we look for another dialysis center? Let me resume the story I told you about in July:

So, because of a malfunction of the parathyroid glands (near the thyroid), and through a complicated chemical process I partly understand, the calcium from my mother’s bones has been disengaging from the bone structures and depositing onto her soft tissues (joints and muscles). That’s the cause of her fingers being “frozen” last winter and spring, when their tips effectively turned into dead meat, because of the poor circulation the calcium deposition had caused.

Nobody knew (at least I didn’t) anything about this complication, since the “good” doctor at the hospitals she had been never told her anything about that, until she did that ecographic scan in July, that revealed her heart’s valves had been covered with calcium.

I got married in August. At my wedding my mother could walk decently, could move freely. After three weeks, she could barely get on her feet, her muscles had stiffened and swollen, and she couldn’t climb the 5 stairs she had to climb to get home, if she hadn’t been helped.

So, I googled for medicine for her condition and found there actually is something that could alleviate her state: Mimpara (or Cinacalcet). The only problem was that the medicine costs $280 (29 pills), so we had second thoughts about buying it, discouraged earlier by the same doctors who said it wouldn’t do any good to her.

Now, determined by her state, we decided to buy that medicine from the money you people donated (thanks a lot for that). We bought the rare medicine (only released on the market in 2006), and without the doctor knowing, following the prescription on the leaflet, she took it. In two weeks my mother could walk again, her muscles came back to normal, and the calcium was not a problem anymore.

High fever was another problem she had to deal with. Again, the “good” doctor gave her the wrong antibiotic, without taking her any analysis so to know whether her body accepts it or not, and each time there were allergic reactions to it, but she continued to administer that antibiotic to my mother regardless of her complaints.

One day, (it was a Wednesday), I remember she got to the hospital in Lugoj to attend the dialysis and she was happy that nothing troubled her anymore, the fever had disappeared. I thought it was a new beginning for her. At the end of that dialysis session, the doctor decided it was time for a last dose of antibiotic.

While the dose had been pouring through her veins, she felt her feet and hands getting unbearably hot, like a thousand wasps stung her.

That night her feet and hands turned violet, like she had been beaten, and the burn continued. My father brought her to Timisoara and we took her to the Emergency Room, from where she had been transported to the dialysis section, though didn’t seem to have mattered the problem was more in the dermatological field.

What followed is from horror movies: big bleeding wounds, huge pains, the skin began to fall off her feet and hands, where naked flesh took its place. In the meanwhile, we interned her at a dermatology clinic, where she stood about two weeks. She had pains I could barely stand just by seeing her. The only way she could walk was the wheelchair.

Now, at almost two months after that, with the help of the great doctors from the new dialysis center we took her, and some silver bandages (Calgitrol), her feet begin to give signs of improving and we hope that by Christmas she would walk again without any problem.

One problem led to another, and now her heart and lung’s tissue are filled with water, as we saw in an X-ray picture made a couple of days ago. She has to get on her feet really well, unless she wants to have the transplant made.

I asked the doctor from the new clinic (Braun) to make an approximate estimation of her healing chances and she said by summer next year she could be in the state for a transplant, but until then we have to find the money and the donor.

In the meanwhile we have purchased another Mimpara, because the bones’ decalcification began again. Mimpara is only a temporary solution, she still has to attend another smaller surgery to remove the sick parathyroid glands that cause the calcium disorder. She has had a scheduling for the surgery in Bucharest on October 15, but she couldn’t go in the condition she was at that time, with those wounds on her feet. Possible infections could have been fatal.

So, this is the latest update on my mother’s health. As I have said, your money have helped a lot, but we need, as far as I understood, somewhere around 30,000 euros to get it done properly.

With all that in mind, if you want to donate, we are more than grateful. Please use the donation button in the sidebar and help us help my mother. We are also putting dime by dime for her transplant from what we earn, but that’s far from enough – we need so much more.
Thank you for your patience reading this article and for your good thoughts!

Ovidiu Sandru.