My name is Izabela, 38, always smiling, active and positive towards life, willing to help, apparently with a kind and huge heart. My many-month fight began on February 9, 2022. When I left the house for a standard pregnancy check-up, I informed her that I would be back in 2 hours. However, that didn't happen...

During the examination, the attending physician became concerned about the baby's blood flow and referred me to the Institute of Mother and Child in Warsaw. I arrived at the emergency room after 9 p.m. - from that moment on, everything started happening very quickly. I felt like I was part of a movie, unfortunately a horror movie... During the ultrasound, the doctor ordered me to be immediately taken to the block. As I was being wheeled around in a wheelchair by a nurse, I only found out that the fetal heart rate was disappearing.

Typically, this operation takes 30 minutes. I woke up from anesthesia only after midnight. The daughter was alive - born at 26 weeks + 6 days - extremely premature - resuscitated after birth due to apnea. This was the only good news that night, that she had been saved, and then more information came to me like lightning:

– You have a lack of blood clotting,

– You had a lot of saliva intraoperative hemorrhage,

– Several units of blood were transfused,

– miraculously, we managed to save you and get you off the table alive,

– blood test results show profound pancytopenia.

More days, more tests, more blood tests, no improvement in parameters, and finally information about a probable diagnosis - suspicion of bone marrow aplasia or acute myeloid leukemia.

My first thought: this isn't really happening, it doesn't concern me, it's probably a mistake in the tests, especially since I feel good, and the tests in January were accurate. On February 12, for further diagnostics, I was taken to the Institute of Hematology and Transfusion in Warsaw, where tests confirmed acute promyelocytic leukemia.

We started treatment, without which the disease would have killed me in 2 or 3 months. February is a month of daily lupus, chemotherapy, and medications - a month that is permanently etched in my memory. I was fighting for my life in one hospital, my little daughter in another. On February 23 at 2:00 my illness took my daughter Lilianna away from me, hypoxia during pregnancy and the entire perinatal situation caused by pancytopenia meant that her tiny body could not cope. The doctors were helpless.

Despite everything, I couldn't break down, there were two more children waiting for me at home: 11-year-old daughter Julita and 5-year-old son Kajetan. They were waiting for their mother, who was only gone for 2 hours on February 9. For my mother, who could not even be visited due to the coronavirus. Today I am in remission, the disease is under control, I have consolidating chemotherapy cycles, then regular check-ups and hopes that the disease will never come back.

Today I am not only fighting the disease, I am also fighting the ruthlessness of the Polish social security system, which in such a difficult moment left me alone and refused to pay benefits. I am waiting for a court hearing in the labor court. ZUS deprived me of my livelihood and funds for the purchase of medicines, and as a result, if the court does not overturn the decision, I will have to pay over PLN 300,000. for hospital treatment.

Unfortunately, savings have ended and so have borrowing opportunities. Today I must ask for help from people of good will who will support me and my family in the fight against the disease and the ruthlessness of the system. Thank you very much for any help!!!