This story began on July 31st, 1998 when my two-year-old daughter, Hanna, was diagnosed with leukaemia. We were living in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine and Hanna was in hospital receiving some treatment.
It is very difficult to get proper treatment in the Ukraine, and there are a lot of sick children because of all the radiation from Chernobyl that is still in the atmosphere. Medicine is in very short supply and very expensive. And because much of the blood is of a poor quality, many of the children get a hepatitis infection from it.
We felt that if Hanna didn't get treatment outside the Ukraine, she would die. So, we decided to put a message on the Internet via a friend's office computer explaining Hanna's condition and our desperate need for help.
Our message - which we sent to many, many organisations around the world - said: "Dear Sir or Madam, my daughter Hanna is 2.5 years old. She is seriously ill. She was hospitalised with suspicion of leukaemia and analysis shows acute myeloid leukaemia. Without contemporary methods of treatment, she will die. The cause of disease is nuclear land contamination due to Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident."
Our doctor told us it would not be possible to get help from another country and when we finally got a response one-and-a-half months later from the Chernobyl Children's Project in Ireland, he told us it must be a joke. He also told us that Ireland was a poor country and it would be different if the offer of help had come from somewhere like Germany or France. Hanna was very sick at the time.
Her white blood cell count was 180,000, and a normal white blood cell count is between 4,000 and 9,000. She was in bed all the time - crying, hardly eating at all and not sleeping well. She also had bad pains in her legs (bone pains can be a symptom of leukaemia). In fact, it's still very difficult for me to talk about how sick she was. I don't know why my Hanna got leukaemia. I know how other children got it but she was a very strong, healthy child before she got sick. At that time, there were 15 children in the hospital in Kiev with acute myeloid leukaemia (the rarer form of childhood leukaemia) and between 40 and 50 children with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (the more common form). We felt her chances were not good.
We decided to take up the offer from the Chernobyl Children's Project to bring Hanna to Ireland for treatment, although I knew nothing about Ireland and neither my husband, Oleksa, nor I spoke any English.
Taking Hanna from the Kiev hospital was the most difficult thing to do because she had already started her second block of treatment, and we had to remove the central venous lines connected to her body so that she could travel by plane. Her doctor told me that once we did this, we were taking the law into our own hands and if she caught an infection, it would be our fault.
We took Hanna from the hospital in Kiev and brought her home for one night before she travelled with Oleksa to Minsk to meet an Irish nurse who then travelled with them to Shannon and on to Dublin to the National Children's Hospital in Tallaght. I had to stay in Kiev because I didn't have my papers ready, but I flew to Ireland one week later. When we first came here, we worked with a interpreter but now I speak enough English to manage. Here, the medical system is very good. We were so happy that Hanna was in a big, clean hospital where the doctors are so professional. For example, in Ireland, Hanna has been able to get blood tests, X-rays and ultrasound scans any time she needed them but in the Ukraine, these things were only available at special times.
Hanna started her second block of treatment soon after we got here. She has had four blocks of treatment in all since we arrived in September. Each time, she has been very sick afterwards but then she improves, which is usual. We have stayed with different families in and around Dublin since we came here. And Oleksa has become a great footballer, first playing with the Portobello Club and now with the Cherry Orchard Club for the second and first teams (who have come first and second respectively in the Leinster Senior League).
Now, Hanna is in remission and has a 70 per cent chance of leading a normal life. Her body is growing stronger every day. She's happy and full of energy and we are so happy to see her happy. She is lucky to be alive. There are only two boys alive that I know of and maybe one other girl from the original 15 who had myeloid leukaemia in the hospital in Kiev with Hanna. I would really like to thank the Chernobyl Children's Project, Dr Owen P. Smith and Dr Corina McMahon at the National Children's Hospital and the families we stayed with.
We are worried about our life back in the Ukraine (The Derypapas are scheduled to fly back to Kiev on Friday) and what might happen if Hanna gets sick. We have no jobs, no house and the levels of radiation are still high. There are still a lot of sick children in the Ukraine and all I can really think about is how can we help these children?
The Chernobyl Children's Project can be contacted on 021506411
In conversation with Sylvia Thompson