I am not used to asking for help, but need to raise money to get out of medical debt.

Three years ago, being only 48, quite fit and healthy his whole life, my husband Dmitri was suffering already a long time from increasing pain in the small of his back and the left leg, the foot was dropping badly. Each morning he couldn’t get up from the bed for 45 minutes because of pain. All without clear cause. When he visited 5-6 insurance appointed doctors in Moscow, where we lived, they all made different diagnoses, suggesting expensive treatment irrelevant to the real problem. Finally, private doctor diagnosed a serious hernia of spinal disc L4-L5, which explained bad pain and leg “malfunction”. The whole process has taken over two years (!), the leg nerve was already seriously damaged by compression and required urgent operation. Alternative was becoming handicapped for the rest of Dmitri’s life.

The waiting time for operation was several months, making the damage to the leg potentially irrecoverable, plus success rate with this kind of operations in Russia is frighteningly low. He had no other choice as to make operation abroad, in Israel, fully paid by ourselves, insurance did not cover anything. Surgeon replaced damaged disk with a prothesis, freed the nerve and fixed vertebrae with metal cage.

Two years after operation, Dmitri still need to receive re-habilitation treatment to keep the left foot functional, and fight chronical allergy caused by operation stress and all the medications he was prescribed after operation.

Operation and hospital costs, travel to Israel, rehabilitation and medication costed totaled to 41,310 USD (recalculated):

Pre-operation consultations                                                          900

MRI, analyses                                                                                       640

Operation (surgeon)                                                                     13,300

Spinal implants                                                                                  5,470

Hospital (operation room, 6 days surgical ward)                               12,500

Physiotherapy                                                                                   1,400

Medications                                                                                       1,050

Complications treatment                                                              1,450

Plane tickets and lodging during treatment                          4,600

It drained all our savings. We were lucky to borrow most of the money from friends and avoid interest, but it 24,900 USD still need to be repaid. We struggle to repair it for over two years, but could not do yet. Due to this and other medical reasons our family even moved to Israel, trying to return to normal life. Settling in in the new country is not easy at all, especially with debts.

We need your contribution to get out of medical debt trap.

Thank you in advance.

Dmitri, Anna and all of our family members.