Humanitarian Foundation BUDI HUMAN - Aleksandar Šapić

 

raises funds for Jovana Vulević Ilić (1984).

 

From 2018, Jovana started to feel strange, tired, nervous ... One day at work she felt a strong pain in her right leg, at that time she worked as a saleswoman and thought she had stretched a muscle, because she was lifting heavy boxes and bags.

 

As the pain continued, she visited the doctor. Then begins her agony and struggle, for life, hope and healing.

 

She went first to a hematologist at the end of 2018, at Clinical Center Niš, who referred her to Plastic Surgery, where the first biopsy was done and sent for analysis to the Pathology department at Clinical Center Niš. She waited for the results for three months, during that time she had no therapy or check up. Findings showed  the reactive lymph nodes in the right groin and thigh.

 

In May 2019, the lymph nodes increased and continued to grow until August, when Jovana woke up one morning with a leg that was 30 cm larger in circumference. On that day, she was urgently admitted to the hospital, to the department of the Clinic for Vascular Diseases, with a diagnosis of deep vein thrombosis. She was transferred from the Vascular Diseases Clinic to Plastic Surgery to have a biopsy done again.  Jovana insisted on sending samples to a private clinic in Novi Sad besides the pathology of the clinic. After the analysis, they received two different opinions. The clinic claims that they are reactive, and the laboratory from Novi Sad that it is an unknown type of Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Wanting to get an accurate diagnosis, she sent tissue samples to the Medical Faculty in Belgrade, from which she received a diagnosis that the lymph nodes are reactive.

 

After the deep vein thrombosis was determined, the vascular surgeon prescribed her therapy with Clexane injections, to which she was entitled only 35 days after the biopsy, after which there were three unsuccessful attempts to switch to oral therapy, which was unsuccessful, and the thrombosis returned to even worse form, so that she received injections for the next ten months on her own expense.

 

Due to the worsening clinical picture in December 2019, Jovana was hospitalized at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, where a biopsy of lymph nodes of the thigh and groin was repeated, which was the third biopsy, where again at her initiative and own expense one sample was analyzed in a private laboratory. The first diagnosis from the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade was the Non-Hodgkin of follicular type, and from the laboratory the Non Hodgkin of diffuse B large-cell type. After that, regardless of the different diagnoses, chemotherapy was applied, which was followed by immunotherapy, because according to the medical advisory board, both types of Non-Hodgkin are treated the same.

 

After four cycles of chemotherapy, the last of which was in April 2020, the expected treatment effect was not achieved. The lymph nodes did not recede, nor did they shrink, nor did the clinical picture improve.

 

Due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, further treatment was suspended and a scan with a PET scanner was awaited. As Jovana thought she was wasting her time, she started with an alternative type of treatment, so the lymph node in the thigh reduced by 50% and was getting better a bit.

 

In July 2020, a PET scanner was done, but by reading the PET scanner, nothing was determined, the expansion of the lymph nodes nor  their reduction was established.

 

In mid-September 2020, Jovan was referred for magnetic resonance imaging of the whole body, when progress was seen, but it was not noticed that lymph nodes appeared on the right side of the neck.

 

However, due to pain and stiffness of the right side of the neck and right shoulder, and due to the situation with the coronavirus pandemic, she went for an ultrasound to a private clinic, where they determine that the lymph nodes in the neck had enlarged and had the structure of reactive nodes. Jovana went to the hematologist again, who suggested a biopsy of the nodes from the neck, but the ENT specialist and the plastic surgeon were against it. Jovana is no longer able to finance everything by herself.

Jovana needs the necessary funds for the continuation of treatment, immunotherapy, specialist examinations, rehabilitation, medications, supplements and to cover the costs of accommodation during therapies out of the place of residence.

 

Let Jovana leave the disease behind! Let's be humane!

 

Let's help Jovana!