A Little Magic Unit

A Little Magic Unit – A guest blog from the Russian Children’s Palliative Care Foundation

Things are going slow with little Anastassia but she is making incredible progress – she can eat and swallow solids today though less than a year ago it was predicted impossible. Her family, her beautiful mother are with her every minute, as the Mobile Palliative Care unit of the Russian Children’s Palliative Care Foundation is there to provide support 7 days a week.

Palliative Care for Children can be compared to a little magic unit. Families are created only with hopes for their own happiness and happiness of their children to come. Then a little disruption in kid’s health puts the whole concept of happiness under the doubt of possibility. Only yesterday everything was possible, happiness and promise of a normal life in hand. And when the diagnosis come – suddenly this faith is shaken, the world changes its colors, source of joy is replaced by a constant source of tension, worry, and uneasy questions.

And what palliative care does it – it does not render your kid healthy but it gives what is needed to bring a difficult situation as close as possible to normal. Of course, one perception of normal changes. What happens is that one learns to find joy in small, maybe tiny things and changes that are perhaps left unnoticed by the rest of the world. But they matter to you, your kid, your family. One stands in the center of this change, and that’s where a totally new perspective is granted, always individual because it borders on life-and-death and pain-relief line. Palliative care gives that new perspective – it’s up to the family to take it or leave it. It’s up to the state and foundations to create opportunities for it. And it’s up to the society to accept and respect these situations.