Daniel Andreiev, an international school student from Rawai, was admitted to Vachira Phuket Hospital in critical condition after nearly drowning in a swimming pool incident on May 2.
He was admitted to hospital after suffering cardiac arrest and respiratory failure. Daniel took about 10 minutes to be revived. His diagnosis included severe brain swelling with brain and brainstem dysfunction, acute kidney injury, multiple metabolic disturbance among other medical conditions.
Doctors managed to stabilise Daniel, but he remained in a coma and was transferred to Samitivej Hospital in Bangkok on a commercial medevac flight urgently organised and paid for by local donors. Their vital support significantly increased his chances of recovery.
Medical tests at Samitivej Hospital and doctors’ statements encouraged cautious optimism for Daniel’s mother, local teacher Liudmyla Andreieva. Daniel, his mother and his older sister all live in Phuket. They left Ukraine because of the war.
It was in Bangkok that Daniel began to respond to stimuli, move and show other signs of returning to life, reports Novosti Phuketa, the Russian-language sister newspaper to The Phuket News.
By July, Daniel’s condition had improved so much that it became possible to return to Phuket. “We will all definitely get him out, help him and do our best. We can handle it,” Liudmyla told everyone who supported her son’s fight for life.
At home in Phuket, Daniel not only increased his motor activity, but also began a real struggle with the artificial respiration device. The brain returning to life insisted that the lungs provide it with oxygen themselves.
Liudmyla explained that Daniel has been in a coma since May, but he is not giving up, consistently showing signs of emerging from a coma. The brain is gradually restoring functions, and the body’s attempts to breathe on its own are becoming more active.
However, at the end of September Daniel was hospitalised with pneumonia caused by problems with the functioning of the esophagus, requiring urgent surgery.
Experts from Europe say that the child has a high chance of returning to life, but for this miracle, Daniel’s family needs financial help right now to eliminate the cause of pneumonia.
Doctors at first attributed Daniel’s problems with breathing to a fight with the apparatus, but then found that due to lying for a long time, the gastrointestinal tract sometimes released food into the lung area. The problem can be solved with surgery, but that requires money.
In her last open appeal, Liudmyla called everyone who supported her family “angels” who performed a miracle for her son. The mother believes that Daniel will come back to life and become an angel of hope for other families who go through a similar experience.
“Dani will succeed, he is a very strong and stubborn boy. The gastroenterologist himself admitted in the last conversation that my child’s body is incredibly strong. The problem with the esophagus should have appeared two months ago. But he is an athlete! Even now, even with pneumonia, he continues to wake up!” says Liudmyla.
Through his own efforts and with the support of his ‘angels’, Daniel has already come a long way and proved that in any statistics there is room for exception. The ‘Help Daniel’ support group believes that after five months of struggle, there can no longer be unsolvable problems.
“It is now critically important to raise funds for surgery to eliminate the cause of pneumonia. It requires several hundred thousand baht, which no one else has, but Dani’s story shows that many small donations can achieve the impossible. For the same reason, every repost and like on social networks is so dear to us, because the more angels there are behind Daniel, the closer the moment when he opens his eyes,” sums up the Help Daniel support group.
You can support Daniel’s fight for life by transferring to Liudmyla Andreeva’s account in Thailand:
Bank Name: Bangkok Bank
Account Number: 264-4-690-857
More details about Daniel’s fight to live are posted on the websites HelpDaniel.ru and HelpDaniel.info.
People can contact the support group and offer any other assistance through accounts on Telegram, Facebook and Instagram. In particular, the family now really needs support in reaching out to organisations that could provide systematic financial assistance to help the family through these last steps towards recovery.