At 41 years old, with six World Championships and seven Olympics under her belt, Oksana Chusovikina is back at the Olympics. The Uzbek mother's story of competing in international gymnastics competitions to earn money to treat her leukemia-stricken son is well known, and the phrase "I don't dare to grow old until you're cured" has touched countless people. Now that her son has basically recovered, she has returned to Uzbekistan while retaining her German citizenship, and is competing for Uzbekistan at the Rio Olympics.
At the end of 2007, veteran Russian journalist Andrei Vantecko (Андрей Ванденко) interviewed Chusovikina and published the article on the website of the Soviet sports newspaper. Let's enter the inner world of Chusovikina.
I was born and raised in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. at the age of 6 my brother took me to gymnastics classes. I soon became a student of Civitlana Kuznetsova, who coached me for 20 years and trained me to be a professional athlete.I represented the Soviet Union at the World Championships in 1991, the CIS at the Barcelona Olympics, and after the breakup of the Soviet Union, it was only natural for me to become an athlete in Uzbekistan.In 1997, I tore my Achilles tendon and was unable to In 1997, I tore my Achilles tendon and couldn't play for a season and a half. I decided to take advantage of this "window" with my husband, the three-time Olympian boxer Kurbanov, to have a baby.
In November 1999, Alisher was born. I really decided that I was done with gymnastics. But then I visited a familiar gym and wanted to recover quickly after the birth to return to competition. I was used to my slimmer, tighter self, but at the time I was very ashamed of myself in the mirror. Anyway, I started training again and returned to the arena without realizing it. When Alisher was just four months old, I was already competing. in September 2002, I traveled with my husband to Busan, South Korea, where we both competed in the Asian Games, where I won two gold medals for Uzbekistan. Before flying back to Tashkent I called home to share my joy with Alisher, whom I had been thinking about day and night, but instead I got the news that Alisher was sick. It seemed to be pneumonia, but it wasn't serious.
At the time, Alisher was staying with his grandmother because my husband and I were both in Busan. She later said that Alisher's condition suddenly worsened and he started coughing up blood, literally like a fountain. She called the ambulance. The doctor came and didn't know what to do, so he just went through the motions, fumbling and running around the child. In the end, it was the driver who seemed to have the most medical experience, and he was the one who drove and pulled Alisher to the Blood Transfusion Institute.
It was especially fortunate that there was a professor on duty at the blood center that day, who had originally graduated from the Leningrad Medical Academy and was very well educated. He examined Alisher and became suspicious. Without a word he took the child for a puncture. To be precise he couldn't do it without the written consent of the parents. But we were thousands of miles apart and time was precious. The diagnosis was that Alisher had leukemia.
I went straight from the airport to the hospital. When I heard the diagnosis my legs went weak and I felt like I almost lost consciousness and planted myself on the ground. The doctor was very understanding and tried his best to comfort me. He said that Alisher's disease was still in its early stages and could be curbed if measures were taken as soon as possible. First in order to raise his hemoglobin index, Alisher needed a blood transfusion. When his son was hospitalized, the diagnosis showed that the index was only 20, while the normal index is 150.
The child was on the verge of death, with one foot in the grave. A blood transfusion eased the situation slightly, but could not completely stop the deterioration. The doctors explained that it could take up to a month to find a solution, and that if chemotherapy was not started, the child might die.
Then we went to a hospital in Tashkent that treats leukemia. The doctor said that one of the six children might survive, and none of those treated with Alisher at the time did. In Uzbekistan, there is no pediatric oncology department, and the child was admitted to a blood transfusion center for the first week, but in fact, blood transfusion centers are not allowed to treat such patients. The conditions of a normal hospital are not there at all, and it is very difficult to describe. To put it in more detail, infusion bottles are hung on the head of a mop, and everyone uses the same public **** toilet - men, women and children.
In the corner there are mountains of bleach - that's what they use to sterilize. Kids are getting blood transfusions and there are boss cockroaches running around on the table ...... Disposable syringes aren't available either unless you bring your own. The usual needles are boiled and used a second, third or even tenth time. But our doctor was so good that he injected Alisher with a very thin catheter, and later even the German doctors were amazed at the work he made. It was the only catheter in the hospital that we found a way to get, and we did everything we could to make sure we didn't lose the plastic valve on it, or we would have had to lose the whole thing. When we went to Germany later we saw that there were mountains of catheters there. They were thrown away after one use, and we had to hold the only catheter we had like an eyeball. I remember sitting in a German clinic thinking about all the people who were dying because of the shortage of basic medical equipment. It was horrible!
Also the medical care was really expensive. In the first months after Alisher was diagnosed with leukemia, we spent almost all of our life savings. We sold our four houses in Tashkent and two cars, but we couldn't make ends meet. We got six thousand dollars for the house, and three thousand euros for the chemotherapy capsules alone. The houses must have been sold cheaply, because we couldn't afford to wait, so we picked the best buyer and sold them. We agreed to whatever he said. The house was given away for nothing, and we were very sad', knowing that my parents had worked all their lives to get this house.
At the time, Uzbekistan promised to give Asian Games winners a bonus of five thousand dollars for a gold medal. I won two gold and silver medals at the 2002 Busan Asian Games, so I could have gotten at least 10,000 dollars. But I didn't get a penny. I didn't want people to feel as if Chusovikina seemed to be complaining. But it just so happened that I needed the money very badly, because Alisher had just been diagnosed with leukemia, and after the 2003 World Championships, history repeated itself, and I won the gold medal again, but there was still no prize money. You know that Uzbekistan had never won a World Championship before that.
At the beginning there were people who told me, "Oksana, if you have any difficulties, just say so, don't be shy." When I confirmed my participation, the "cooked duck" flew away. It's always like that, like a lemon, you are squeezed dry and thrown away. It's no use trying to shake the government. The Uzbek Gymnastics Association wrote a letter to the President of Uzbekistan, and Karimov asked two companies to transfer money to me. But by the time the money came, my son would probably be long dead. The first department in charge of the money ignored the order of the head of state and refused to transfer the money, and the second department in charge of the money wired fifteen thousand dollars only a year later. Alisher had been transferred to a hospital by then.
After coming out of the Tashkent hospital, we went to Moscow. The hospitals in Moscow were much better, but those with money and connections sent their children to Cologne, where Alisher was later treated.
I have been competing for the German Gymnastics Club since 1996. It pays a thousand euros a competition, four thousand euros a season. The payoff, frankly, isn't much; after all, we're not soccer players. But we always consoled ourselves with the old saying: money does not equal happiness. But it was FC K?ln that saved Alisher's life.
When I realized that it is useless to wait for help at home, I began to think about where to go after the fallen man gets up. I didn't feel desperate, I felt that something could be done, and in 2003, through some German friends, I got the address of a children's leukemia clinic. I left Alisher in Moscow and took the first flight to Germany. In Berlin, I showed the doctor the diagnosis. The doctor confirmed the diagnosis. There were still empty beds at the clinic, but the treatment would cost 120,000 euros, and I couldn't even come up with half of that. That's when my German club vouched for me. I didn't even have time to ask them. They just said to me, "Okosana, your son is in trouble and that means we are obliged to help him." Less than a month after I arrived in Germany, Alisher was already in Germany for treatment.
120,000 euros, which I won't be able to pay back even if I compete until I die. The Germans were very aware of this, and their media started raising money for Alisher. Before the New Year many local TV stations came to the hospital, made short films about my son and made public a bank account for donations. At the match the club manager announced that all spectators who donated money to me, no matter how much, would get a discount. The club also rented us a house in Cologne and paid the rent for us. Six months later I got a work visa for Germany and bought health insurance so that Alisher's medication was free. This literally saved us.
But in 2003 I was banned from going to Germany by Uzbekistan, even though I had just won a world title for Uzbekistan at the end of 2002 and should have been understood as a matter of course. But no, I was constantly told that I had to defend the honor of my country. I tried to explain that I didn't care about anything else but my child's health, and that my son's life was on the line. At that time I was accused of lack of patriotism, selfishness, and various other things. The Uzbekistan Gymnastics Association held a meeting and called on everyone to vote against my departure. One of the delegates even said that I had wanted to emigrate for a long time and that this time I was taking advantage of my child's illness. If he had dared to say that in front of me, I would have shot him or strangled him. Our people do not think of others, only of their own interests.
Among the participants was also my former coach Civitlana Kuznetsova, who also refused to take my side. This was very incomprehensible to me. she flew to Germany with me as a coach in 2002, but soon returned, on the grounds that her family was in Tashkent. I said, "I'm sorry, my family is in Cologne, my son is in the hospital in Cologne, and I'm not going to leave him one step." There was a lot of talk about my defection. They said that my behavior was dishonorable, leaving the coach who had trained me for so many years and suddenly going to Germany. It was as if I had gone to a competitor, not to save my children! Kuznetsova also has a son, daughter and granddaughter. I said, "Civitlana, you are a mother yourself, Grandma, think about what you would do if you were in my place." But she didn't listen, and I was very bitter and very angry. Then I ran into her again at the Olympics, and it was a trick of fate. Kuznetsova was a judge at the vaulting competition at that time. We didn't even say a word at the time, we said hello, and like people who don't know each other very well, we went off in different directions. I'm not a person who holds grudges. What matters is that my son recovers.