Vika's Story

The girl in the pink dress looking at you with sad eyes is Vika Liakh, a little girl from Ukraine. She died at the age of 5 from a malignant brain tumor, PNET.

This web-site appeared in August 2007 when the girl’s family desperately needed help to raise money in order to go abroad for treatment. Unfortunately, in spite of the hard struggle, little Vika passed away on April 23, 2008.

This site remains in the memory of this beautiful and brave little girl. Her granddad, Sergey, became a volunteer and is now helping other kids diagnosed with cancer in his home city of Kharkov.

THANK YOU ALL for giving us hope to SAVE VIKA!

Today your help will be very appreciated by many other families whose kids were diagnosed with cancer:
Help Kids with Cancer

Vika’s story:

VICTORIA LJAKH, Vika for short, a little girl from Ukraine, turned 5 years old in summer 2007. For the previous 2 years, accompanied only by her grandparents, she had been fighting against a deadly oncological decease called stPNET, a brain tumor in simple words. 
Today Victoria cannot walk, her left side of body is nearly paralyzed. She weighs 12 kilos at 110 cm of height. 
Starting from March 2006, Victoria has been treated by several Ukrainian oncological and neurosurgical medical institutions, twice gone through very complicated surgeries, passed numerous exhausting courses of chemo and radio therapy. Unfortunately, not all the procedures could be started in time or fully completed.  Despite all the struggle, the tumor has been coming back... 
After consulting foreign and domestic doctors, it became clear that the best thing we could do for Victoria at the moment was to start a new chemotherapy acc. to MetHIT protocol and after, in case of tumor response, a High Dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplantation.
Thanks to the great help of many kind and generous people, Victoria's GradDad, Sergey, has been able to raise enough money in order to bring the girl for  the life-saving course of chemo-therapy in Moscow.
On July 18th, 2007, Victoria started  her first VP-16+Carbo 96-hour  infusion  under supervision of Prof. Zheludkova in Moscow's Scientific and Practical Center of Medical Aid to Children. This intensive and highly toxic therapy demanded that the girl stayed in a resuscitation unit during all the 4 days on infusion. 
Fortunately, all four courses of the induction chemotherapy were without complications, and the girl's physical condition was quite satisfactory. After the chemo, Victoria apparently felt better, even trying to walk on  her  own  and stand for a while without help, even though her blood test results were low (which is normal after the chemo). 
Acc. to MRI as of August 28th, 2007, the doctors actually managed to receive the tumor's response to this chemo, as it showed 25% tumor reduction! So, Victoria received a chance to continue her treatment in a foreign clinic. She needed to have a high dose chemotherapy with bone marrow transplantations, which was possible to carry out only in a foreign clinic.  
The Charitable Fund Happy World (Russia) gave a great support to Victoria and her family, helped to find a foreign clinic and to join the efforts of many great open-hearted people. Thanks to great help of many kind people, the money for treatment in "Hadassah" medical center (Israel) was raised just in time! Mr. Stefan Selch and his friends from Germany transferred the missing amount of money to "Hadassah", for which we are enormously grateful!
At the end of October 2007, Victoria went to the clinic of Hadassah where she  received 2 blocks of high dose chemotherapy with stem cells transplantations (BMT). The high dose chemo was extremely toxic, and after each CT block the girl's life was within a hair's breadth of death…  However, Vika is a very is very strong and brave little patient and each time she came back to life, day and night surrounded by her caring grandmother.
Unfortunately, according to the conclusion of Israeli doctors, the last MRI examination showed no distinctive decrease of tumor or metastasis, so the decision to switch to the palliative treatment was taken. Starting from Feb 20, 2008 Victoria and her family are at home, in Kharkov (Ukraine).
In spite of all, we believed in miracle till the end and wished our little princess would live on… On April 23, 2008 little Vika deceased and left us to be with our Lord. May she be in the Kingdom of Heaven, God rest her soul.

Sergey's (Victoria's GDad's) e-mail:
sergey.ljakh@mail.ru

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