About Sivan

Hello Everyone,

My name is Sivan and in February 2009 I will be three years old. I have a brother (Idan) who is 10 and a sister (Setav) who is 9.  My parents are Danny and Einat Yanai.

 I really love to assemble difficult puzzles, to climb on the bars in the playground, to  sing and to dance (especially the Festigal songs, Yuval Hamebulgal and Tzippy Shavit) and to travel with my family to fun places.  I love to drink chocolate milk, black beer and to eat cornflakes and lots of other things.

I can't really remember when, but I have been told that when I was 4 months old I didn’t feel very well so my parents took me to the hospital where I was diagnosed with leukemia,  a cancer of the blood. I was hospitalized for many months at the Schnieder Children's Hospital in Petach Tikva and was given chemotherapy and other painful treatments.  I suffered very much and it is a good thing that I don’t remember anything from that period.  One day, when I am older, if I will want to know what I underwent, I will be able to look at the photos which my father photographed of me and which he put on his gallery on the Internet:

 www.babysivan.com

It is a series of photos which even won the Local Testimony Prize in 2006 and was displayed at Dizengoff Center.

Anyways, after the first period of treatments, I continued with the treatment protocol and continued to receive maintenance chemotherapy for a year and a half until the age of two and half. When I finished the protocol treatments, everyone hoped that I had gotten better.

For almost a half a year I lived at home without any medication, waiting for my immune system to strengthen so that I could go to nursery just like all the other kids my age.

But, right at the beginning of 2009 I started to feel poorly and at the hospital I was  told  that the leukemia had returned and this time I would require a bone marrow transplant. Since then, I have been in the hospital most of the time, and I don’t have one moment of rest. Every day I am pricked, undergo anesthesia, operated on, have tubes stuck into my small body. The medicines which I receive are repulsive and cause me to be sad most of the time.

My mom and dad do shifts at the hospital and at night when I sleep with mom in the bed, I hold on to her very shirt very tightly since I am afraid that she will leave me alone.

I want so much to be healthy already and to go to the nursery with all of the kids, but the problem is that that within the entire world, a matching bone marrow donor has not yet been found. Without this bone marrow transplant I will not get better.

On January 21^st, 2009, "Ezer Mizion" will hold a big fundraising function, and perhaps a donor will be found. The chances of finding a matching donor are 1 in 20,0000 and there are many kids just like me who are waiting for donors.  My chances of finding a matching donor will be increased if many people come to give blood samples on January 21^st.  But that is also not enough, since each blood sample needs to be checked. The cost of each blood sample check is 180 NIS, so even if lots of people will come to donate blood samples, if not enough money is collected to check each blood samples, all the blood samples will not be able to be checked and this will damage my chances of finding a suitable match.

Anyone who is between the ages of 18-50 and can give a bone marrow blood sample, please mark the date January 21^st, 2009 and check the details at the Ezer Mizion site:

www.ami.org.il

 My life is in your hands.

Thank you,

Sivan

www.babysivan.com

Location points for giving bone marrow blood samples can be found here on the Ezer Mizion site:

http://www.ami.org.il/default.asp?V_DOC_ID=2626

To give financial donations to check each bone marrow blood sample, please call

 Ezer Mizion at: 1-800-236-236