Pavlo got a chance at a seizure-free life

Pavlo is 13 years old. He is an eighth-grader from Pavlohrad in the Dnipropetrovsk region. The boy loves chemistry and biology and dreams of becoming an orthopedic doctor to help others.

Pavlo was diagnosed with epilepsy at just three years old. For many years, his parents did everything possible: consulted doctors, underwent treatment, changed medications, and tried to keep the disease under control. However, the seizures became more frequent and severe.

«Lately,» recalls the boy's mother, Daria, "the seizures were chaotic and almost uncontrollable. They were taking away what was most precious to Pavlo — the opportunity to live a normal childhood: to walk calmly, chat with friends, and dream without fear.".

To give the boy a chance at a full life, the doctors decided to perform surgery. Together with his mother, Pavlo arrived at St. Nicholas Children's Hospital in Lviv. However, performing the complex brain surgery required special electrodes—expensive materials that the family could not afford on their own.

The Zaporuka Foundation purchased the necessary materials for the surgery. Their cost was about 190 thousand hryvnias. The surgery lasted 8 hours and was successful.

«Pavlo had pharmacoresistant epilepsy—a form of the disease that does not respond to medication,« explains Taras Mykytyn, Head of the Neurosurgery Department at St. Nicholas Children's Hospital. »Despite continuous therapy, the seizures did not stop. The surgery was complex because we needed to remove the pathological focus in the brain. This intervention would have been impossible without the special electrodes purchased by the Zaporuka Foundation. Thanks to them, we mapped the brain in real time and saw the abnormal activity disappear right during the procedure. The result was striking: whereas before the surgery the boy had up to six seizures a day, within a week he went home without a single one.».

Pavlo and his mother have already returned home and are going through the recovery process, but we believe that the hardest part for this family is already behind them.

Because together we can definitely do more — be there in the most difficult moments and give children a chance for a healthy future!