One of our patients, Vika Kozeleva, is a passionate football fan. She knows the names of all Ukrainian football players (she especially pulls for Donetsk “Shakhtar”) and watches all the games. To make the girl, who has such an interesting hobby, happy on the eve of the 8-th of March, we told about her to the members of football club “Metallurg Zaporozhye”. The young men were really surprised to hear that, though they willingly agreed to go and congratulate Vika on the coming holiday. But when they heard where Vika is being treated and how many more children there are in our department they decided to make a holiday for all of our young patients.
On the 7-th of March 2007 we greeted the three of our “Metallurg” players, namely Andrey Glushchenko (a goalkeeper, the captain of the team), Ruslan Lubarskiy (a halfback) and Artyom Chelyadinskiy (a back).
They brought cakes, juice and of course loads of smiles and pleasure to our children. The most inveterate fans (such as Vika Kozeleva) recognized the football players at once. One should have seen their eyes at that moment! At first, they couldn’t help looking at our guests and then they were looking at me with the only question in their eyes: “Could THEY be really here?” The football players congratulated our mothers and girls on the coming holiday and wished fast recovery to everyone. They really need such open-hearted fans as these children are! All the children of our department were gifted the club scarves of “Metallurg”.
Only when the footballers got up and put their clothes on, the children came round after their first shock of happiness and plunged into taking the autographs (my notebook was the first one to become the victim as the children torn out half of its leaves for taking the autographs). Then they started taking pictures of the guests on their mobile phones cameras.
And of course a separate picture for Vika Kozeleva – the only star of the whole event!
We heartily thank the footballers of “Metallurg” for the holiday they made for our children and for the gifts they brought! We have to say a separate “Thank you” for their sincere wish to help our children in the future and to raise the money for a marrow transplant of Daniil Pshenichniy.
