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"I just can’t stand to see his pain anymore. He’s only 9 now but he has suffered so much because of his failing liver! He’s been fighting for the past four years, each new day a new struggle to stay alive.
The last time his condition was this critical, I gave him a piece of my own liver. I almost died during that operation, and I’m suffering the effects even now. But my poor boy... He still needs one more surgery and after that he’ll be okay, but the cost..."— Lakshmi, mother, in tears
Four years ago, little Nandan had woken up one day with a high fever, followed soon by severe vomiting. All the local clinics they took him to suggested it was just the flu, and prescribed medicines as such. But despite taking them all religiously, never missing a dose, two weeks had gone by and his condition hadn't improved.
“He had stopped eating, he had lost a lot of weight, and he had terrible stomach pain all the time. We were really scared by that point, so we decided to take him to a city doctor instead, hoping that maybe they would be able to do something the local doctors weren’t able to. We never expected them to do a simple test and tell us that our Nandan’s liver was failing, that he was dying!” – Lakshmi
'We thought the worst was behind us, that we had saved our son’s life!'
The desperate parents were told that he needed an emergency liver transplant, and Lakshmi had been selected as the donor. She and Nandan’s father, Chandraiah, spared no effort that year, begging and borrowing from everyone they knew: all their family members, their neighbors, Chandraiah’s co-workers. It had all been a long and terrifying ordeal. With every extra week it took them to put together the money, Nandan’s condition had only been getting worse and worse. But eventually they gathered enough money, and Nandan and Lakshmi underwent their respective surgeries. For nearly two years after that, Nandan showed positive signs of recovery.
But he started inching closer and closer to death once again, in 2019
“One morning in 2019, out of the blue, Nandan started vomiting blood! By then his liver failure had started feeling like an old forgotten nightmare, so it didn’t even occur to us that that could be the problem again. But when we took him to the hospital, they checked and told us that... that the previous surgery hadn’t worked, his body hadn’t accepted my liver fully! Within weeks his condition started deteriorating. We tried for more than a year after that to manage it with just medicines, but a few months ago his stomach started swelling abnormally, and he’s been in terrible pain ever since!”
Ascites, the build-up of fluid in the abdomen, is a horrible sign in Nandan’s case. It means his liver has reached end-stage and that he could lose his life any day now. He needs another liver transplant, but his family is beyond helpless this time around.
Only your generosity can save Nandan now
With the pandemic last year, Nandan’s small family has already been struggling financially. Chandraiah, then a daily-wager, hadn't been able to find work for months on end. Now he’s a housekeeper/cleaning boy in a small company, but there’s no way he can afford such a procedure again with the salary from that job. On top of all their regular month-to-month expenses, and the cost of Nandan’s medicines, Chandraiah’s still paying off the loans he took two years ago! This time, without your help, this family will not be able to save their little boy.
