A heart at 22%, inoperable cancer and one line in the health basket

"I am writing to anyone who can help save my husband's life" — that's how the letter we received this week begins. Natalya wrote it. Her husband's name is Mikhail. Mikhail is 67. He has 100% disability. He's a decent, quiet, thoughtful man — the kind of person you'd just call "real" and not feel the need to explain further. Husband, father, grandfather. He worked his whole life. He loved photography and history. As a young man, he was published in magazines — he wrote humorous crosswords, poems, and material for KVN, the famous Soviet comedy league, and performed himself. Reading the way Natalya describes him, you find yourself thinking how good it would be just to sit next to this man and stay quiet for a while. In 1986, in what feels like a different life now, Mikhail absorbed a heavy dose of radiation after the Chernobyl explosion. Some time later, Crohn's disease appeared. Part of his intestine was removed, surgery after surgery, recovery. Then — decades of more-or-less ordinary life. He and Natalya raised their children. They traveled the world. They lived the kind of ordinary good life everyone strives for and almost no one knows how to value while they still have it. Two years ago, everything fell apart. First — a massive heart attack. Three stents. The doctors pulled him through. They had barely caught their breath when a non-healing wound appeared near his coccyx. Biopsy. Squamous cell carcinoma, already grown into the internal organs. Inoperable. Chemotherapy and radiation nearly killed Mikhail before the cancer could. His kidneys gave out — two nephrostomies had to be put in. But the doctors pulled him through again. He began coming back — to his children, to his granddaughter, to Natalya. They started making plans again. And then, at a routine follow-up, the doctors found a new tumor. Chemotherapy is not an option. Mikhail's heart is working at 22%. His kidneys are barely holding on. He simply will not survive it. There is another treatment. A biological one. It targets cancer cells precisely and works even on inoperable tumors. He needs it twice a month, for life. The drug is included in Israel's national health basket — and one of the criteria fits Mikhail's case exactly. Leumit refused. The formal reason: the basket lists cancer of the rectum and colon. Mikhail's colon, rectum, and part of his small intestine were removed years ago — because of the same Crohn's disease that grew out of his Chernobyl exposure. The tumor appeared in the area where these organs normally are. Mikhail doesn't have them. By the wording of the document, he doesn't qualify. So a man whose entire current condition is a direct consequence of Chernobyl and Crohn's was denied treatment precisely because Crohn's destroyed the very organs the basket criteria were written for. His oncologist is preparing an appeal. But you can't file an appeal on nothing — you have to show a positive response to the treatment. And to show a response, the treatment has to start. Now. The first injection is needed within days. One injection — every two weeks. ₪12,000 a month. We need to carry Mikhail through six months — the window in which he can show his first results and file for reconsideration with the health fund. With campaign costs included, that comes to about ₪80,000. After that — the health fund takes over. After that, Natalya and Mikhail will manage on their own. Right now — they can't. If we don't step in here, Leumit wins. Not out of malice, but because of a line in a document that didn't account for a person with this medical history. And Mikhail dies of a technicality. That can't be allowed to happen. Not to him. Not to a man who has survived Chernobyl, Crohn's disease, a massive heart attack, inoperable cancer, kidney failure — and still wants to live and watch his granddaughter grow up. Without us, Natalya won't be able to carry her husband through this. With us, Mikhail has a chance. Every shekel is a step toward the next injection. Every next injection is one more morning when Natalya wakes up and hears her husband breathing beside her. Let's give him that chance.