Public can help end Nikita’s tumour hell

A Cork mum is asking the public for help to raise money for a procedure to remove a life-threatening tumour from her 17 year old son’s head.

This time last year, Irina Antonyuk’s son Nikita was diagnosed with a very rare type of tumour known as juvenile nasopharyngeal angiofibroma (JNA). JNA is a benign vascular tumour that appears in the nasal cavity and, though it is not cancerous, it can grow rapidly and cause serious health problems.

Since his diagnosis, Ms Antonyuk says her son’s life has changed a lot and his health has continued to worsen with Nikita suffering significant weight loss and difficulty sleeping due to due to pressure in his nasal cavity.

The fast-growing tumour is also putting pressure on the teenager’s eyes causing him to experience double vision at times, as well as causing his ears to constantly feel blocked with an accompanying ringing sound. Ms Antonyuk said her son has not smelled anything since April 2020.

Following his diagnosis, Nikita was initially told he would need surgery and was given a date in January 2021 but due to Covid-19, the procedure was cancelled, and he and his mum have heard nothing since.

Ms Antonyuk, who lives in Douglas with her son, has recently set up a GoFundMe page to raise money in the hope of finding other medical options overseas. “There are hospitals in Germany with very experienced surgeons who have performed JNA surgeries before and they can help Nikita and bring him back to a normal life,” she wrote on the GoFundMe page.

So far, almost €13k of a total goal of €50k has been raised - which is the estimated cost of surgery and all other associated medical expenses. Ms Antonyuk said her son would need to remain in Germany for eight days for embolization, a procedure that blocks blood flow to the tumour.

He may also need hormonal therapy.

“After the surgery, we will need to do a lot of rehabilitation procedures and scans but it can be done in Ireland. We need to have this surgery so urgently because the tumour has become much more aggressive than before and each day is such a great battle and we don’t know how much longer we can wait,” she wrote.

Ms Antonyuk described her son as a lovely boy who always cares a lot about humanity and who is interested in maths and computers and dreams to become a computer software engineer.

In the most recent update to the GoFundMe page, Ms Antonyuk thanked the public for its support and said it had restored the hope they had almost lost.

To donate money to help Nikita have the surgery he urgently needs, visit gofundme.com and search ‘Nikita’.