A 20-year-old student who worked multiple jobs nonstop to save his dying mother from cancer has run out of time after she died on Sunday.
Ivan Serkin, 20, a music conservatory student, worked tirelessly as a cleaner and as a janitor among other jobs in a desperate bid to save up the RUB 5 million (GBP 46,100) needed for a potentially life-saving operation for his mother Alexandra in the city of Novosibirsk, which is located in Novosibirsk Oblast in Russia’s Siberia region.
But he took to Instagram on Sunday, 20th February, to say: “Today at 6.05am my mother passed away. We didn’t have time.”
Ivan had managed to save up hundreds of thousands of rubles over the last couple of years after his mother was diagnosed with a brain tumour when she was a child aged five.
The tumour was discovered by accident after she went to hospital because she had been given a spinal puncture without anaesthesia or pain medication, leaving her right arm and left leg paralysed.
She was diagnosed in Moscow with a glioma, a tumour of the brain stem. It is currently unclear when exactly the diagnosis took place, but it was during the Soviet era, when there were no CT scans or MRI machines. So doctors said: “Go home. Live as long as you can.”
Over time, her arm and leg began working again, albeit with a lack of coordination, and she grew up, with the family forgetting all about the tumour.
She gave birth to her son Ivan some 20 years ago, with the father leaving during her pregnancy.
She took her son to music school and made sure he had classes, which eventually earned him a place at the Higher School of Music in Yakutia, where he began studying the piano at a university level before transferring to the Novosibirsk Conservatory.
But in April 2021, he said that his mother’s health deteriorated significantly. He said: “She got off the bus in Vitim onto ice, slipped and hit the back of her head on the ground.
“This possibly triggered the growth of the malignant tumour. Mum stopped walking, her eyesight worsened, but local doctors could not help her. They diagnosed her with internal occlusive hydrocephalus, in other words, a violation in the outflow of cerebrospinal fluid from the brain.
“A little later, they discovered a giant tumour the size of a tennis ball.”
The tumour inside her skull reportedly measured 3.2 centimetres by 2.5 centimetres when it was discovered.
By September last year, Alexandra could hardly walk any more, and in January this year, she could no longer stand.
She was bedridden, with the Russian Ministry of health allegedly refusing to give her a free operation and with clinics that were contacted in Israel reportedly asking for vast sums of money that a student in Ivan’s position simply could not afford.
In September last year, there was a glimmer of hope at the Novosibirsk Road Clinical Hospital, where they managed to perform a bypass surgery and drain fluid from the 46-year-old woman’s brain.
This operation and subsequent treatment costs the student a reported RUB 260,000 (GBP 2,400).
Ivan had worked all summer as a courier delivering packages on a bicycle, and that night, he wrote music in a desperate bid to save up enough money to pay for his mother’s operation.
He also helped his grandparents with raising his seven-year-old brother, who has not been named, in Yakutia, regularly sending money.
Just over 10 days ago, Ivan said: “This shunt, which was installed in Novosibirsk, is now saving her life. I moved my mother in with me, she could hardly get out of bed, and once she fell.
“This possibly damaged the device in her head, and before the New Year, my mother got worse. The examination showed that the glioma in her head continued to grow.
“It turned out that the benign tumour had developed into a malignant one, and we went to Moscow to the hospital named after Academician A. N. Burdenko. They said that the tumour was inoperable – too huge, and the patient might not survive chemotherapy.”
Alexandra then lost the power of speech and it became harder and harder for her to eat. The student, undeterred, signed his mother up for a paid operation at a medical centre in Europe – it is unclear which one – where they asked for RUB 5 million in payment.
The sum of money was far greater than what Ivan could afford, so he started a crowdfunding campaign on social media, which even caught the attention of popular local Instagrammers such as Nika Viper, who shared his story with her 5.1 million followers.
It is currently unclear how much money the crowdfunding campaign had amassed, but Ivan’s efforts were cut short after his mother passed away on Sunday.
