Thirty-year old Hayk Ktrakyan, whose door nobody has ever knocked to lend a helping hand, is swallowing his pride in order to save his son. Every day Hayk sees something in Vahe and that ties him closer to his son. More and more he feels that he will do anything just so nothing happens to Vahe.
Eight-year old Vahe’s parents know that Vahe will die sooner or later if some benefactor doesn’t see his own child in Vahe and lend him a helping hand. This young father gets emotional when he talks about his son and understands that he can’t really do anything for his son without any financial resources.
Hayk and Gohar got married and had a daughter named Lilit. She knows about Vahe’s illness and has warned her parents that she can’t live without her brother. Vahe was born on August 18 last year with normal size and weight, but he had a physiological yellowness.
“They told us that the yellowness would go away 40 days after the child’s birth.”
But according to Hayk, the child’s face started turning greenish after 40 days. With the fear that their child may have yellow jaundice, the parents transferred Vahe to the Nork infection hospital where the preliminary diagnosis was disinfection of the liver’s gall-bladder.
“After that, they told us to go to the Babloyan center, the doctors looked at him and confirmed the diagnosis,” says Vahe’s father. He adds that the doctors recommended doing an operation on the child right away. Two-month old Vahe’s operation took 5-6 hours.
Basically, the child didn’t have galls or a gall-bladder when he was born, he had capillaries in his liver, but they don’t function. Vahe’s galls pile up in his liver and the liver gets decayed. The doctors told Hayk beforehand that the operation may be 25% effective, but Hayk believes that it is effective so much that Vahe is still breathing. The medical equipment in Armenian hospitals isn’t able to detect the liver defect of a pregnant woman or a newborn, and that just makes things more complicated.
“If they were able to detect the defect during the pregnancy, they would get rid of the defect, it would have been easier; but my wife was very healthy. It never crossed our minds that something like this would happen. They say that they had brought the equipment 1-2 months ago, they operate it, but they discovered the illness months after Vahe was born,” says Hayk, whom the doctors have said that this is a rare disease and they have never seen this before. Hayk says that he was lucky to have professional doctors because he believes that in most cases the parents lose the child at an early age forever, but Vahe has been going on strong for 8 months already. Currently, the child’s situation has gotten worse. There is still no effect even after the second operation because the liver can’t push the gall out and cirrus starts in the liver. Vahe has a fever non-stop, his skin is turning more and more yellow and he can’t digest well. I ask the father:
“How is Vahe?”
The father’s eyes lighten up and he tries to do his best to give a correct description of his child.
“If you look at him, he is no different from the rest of the kids; he is conscious, recognizes his parents, his tooth fell out on Easter and another tooth will probably fall out today…”
The father gets very happy when his son is hungry and starts to make noises. He always wants to hear him make noise.
After a moment of silence, Hayk says that his son Vahe is physically weak. Vahe needs a liver transfer in order to keep on living and that transfer is mainly done in France and Belgia. Russia also does these kinds of operations, but Hayk doesn’t know how effective they are. The parents have sent Vahe’s medical documents to the children’s hospital in France, which is a hospital especially for operations on foreigners, but he still hasn’t gotten a reply. A French doctor, who was recently in Armenia, told Hayk that if Vahe didn’t go through an operation within 1-2 years, then he would die. The parents are in panic because their child’s situation is horrible, he keeps on having fevers. Hayk believes that his son simply survives thanks to some of his organism’s resources, which will die soon. The parents need the money to save Vahe from dying.
We are asking help from kind people
8 month old Vahe Ktrakyan needs to get a liver transfer abroad and quickly. Those who would like to show some financial aid for treating the child can transfer the money to the special account numbers listed below.
ArmEconomBank, “Metaks” branch
163218216170 (AMD)
163218216188 (USD)
163218216196 (EURO)