Let's help Stas

My 5-month-old son, who was born with spina bifida, fights for his physical ability on a daily basis. There are many accompanying illnesses and not a week goes by that we don’t see a doctor. Staś requires a lot of work and time. He has problems with the bladder, must be rehabilitated with intensive methods several times a day, and has orthopaedic problems. We have learnt recently that Staś needs to have his dislocated hip joint operated as soon as possible. We need your help!

Staś is so little and has been through so much already. Another scar must appear on his body… Fortunately, there is always a smile on his sweet face as if he felt that his family would do anything for him. We waited for him for so long… We prayed to St. Stanislaus Papczyński and, through the whole pregnancy, we asked God for everything to just be good. When I was a patient on an antenatal ward for four months, various thoughts went through my head.

Staś’s results were getting worse. He assumed a very low position already in the 30th week. Because of that I had to lie in bed with wooden blocks elevating my pelvis, so basically I lay with my head lower than my legs. A few weeks earlier, my son and I had been operated for 4.5 hours by 3 teams of specialists. First contractions appeared already during the operation and I received epidural anaesthesia. Luckily, Staś survived the worst part and was born in the 38th week. That was an excellent result that should have been rewarded by his hugging dad, who was far away from us for the whole pregnancy. Unfortunately, Staś met his dad only for few seconds through the glass and again only after a week. The pandemic took this long awaited moment away from us…

My little son was taken away from me already after 12 hours. Decrease in saturation resulted in Staś’s quick transport to a neonatal intensive care unit. There we heard another bad diagnosis – intrauterine pneumonia and cardiomyopathy. My world has fallen apart when I heard that. I had no idea what it meant. Would he get better? I was alone and heartbroken, but the only thing I heard was “pull yourself together!”. Walking down the corridor on my way to Staś’s incubator, I heard crying babies beside their mothers and I cried with them.

Once Staś’s condition stabilized and I could finally take him in my hands, I was the happiest person in the world. I didn’t let him out of my hands for several hours.

This small person received two antibiotics already on his first day. Soon after, he got another antibiotic that he took for three months. But this was just the beginning. Several casts, a cut through the Achilles tendon, weekly cranial ultrasound scans, bladder examinations, neurologists, neurosurgeons, daily rehabilitation… I promised him that we won’t be coming back to hospital too soon during our last stay on the ward. But now, I have to break that promise. An expensive hip operation at a specialist hospital in Vienna is necessary. The best doctors in Europe work there. We have to act. Let’s act for Staś!

Pamela – mum