Dear Neurologist,
Hello, this is Atanazar Akatov writing you from Turkmenistan. How are you? I hope everything is allright with the conference. I am writing to you about my son's illness hoping somebody might be able to answer my questions for me. I found you on the Internet so I decided to email you to ask you questions about my ill son. I really hope that you can help me.
Here's some information about my son. My son became ill with meningitis when he was 4 months old on March 5, 2001. He had to stay in an emergency room of the hospital for two months. After that he stayed in another hospital for quite a long time and so far he is like a three month baby who cannot sit, hold his head because of its heavy weight, not talking about that he cannot talk, look at you directly, crying sometimes without controlling himself, suffers from his headache where there is fluid which doesn't let him develop and so on. It's been more than 2 years after he became sick and as doctors in my country Turkmenistan say that his current illness is "subdecompensated hydrosephaliya". (I am very sorry for translating these medical terms being not sure if my translation is true or not) In Russian it's "subdecompensirowannaya gidrosefaliya" and it's the kind of "vyrajennaya vnutricherepnaya gipertenziya". He has an infection of the fluid of his spinal cord and the fluid surrounds the brain.
The diagnosis was made by growing bacteria from a sample of spinal fluid. The spinal fluid was obtained by performing a spinal tap, in which a needle was inserted into an area in the lower back several times where fluid in the spinal canal was readily accessible.
His condition: head ache, cannot hold his head, no reaction, suffers from the fluid that surrounds the brain which has difficulty in surrounding in his head I think.
I would be very glad to get a reply from you. I know you are busy to answer it but please give me a consultation. Maybe you could tell me the places in Moscow where I can get help for my son, organizations which can help me financially and the sites where I can get exact information that will help me to help my son to recover from that illlness.
Thank you in advance. Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best of luck!
Atanazar Akatov
Ashgabat/ Turkmenistan
P. S. The doctors told me that we have about three months for him and then even the operation might not help him.
Д- р Кушель (I'm sure that you can read Russian)