Veronika´s story

Our daughter Veronika is a child who was in a motion since she was a little kid. She liked roller-blading, riding a bike, jumping on a trampoline, doing handstands and handsprings, but above all else, she loved and still loves skiing. She could ski all day long without being tired. That was the reason why we registered her into a ski club and she began to participate races. Her training for her fatal season began on Friday 13th November 2015 with leaving to Austria. Skiing and trainings were going great and Veronika was happy about her first winter joys and trainings for races which were things she was excited about the whole year. But on Sunday, 15th November 2015, everything has changed. During her last downhill, thanks to unexpected worsening of the weather, she lost control and hit a wooden post at the edge of ski slope. She sustained severe injuries of her spine, one lung and she broke her arm.

Directly from the slope she was transported by a helicopter to hospital in Linz in Austria, but there doctors couldn´t help Veronika because of a lack of equipment for such severe injuries. That is why she was transported to clinic in Klagenfurt, where a four hours long surgery of her spine and hand took place. We travelled to Klagenfurt in the same day as the accident happened. At 5 am the doctors told us that her injury of the spine is very serious with a wound of her spinal cord and that the most likely, she will not be able to walk again. Our worst scenario was confirmed by a diagnosis we were so afraid of during our travel to Austria.

They also told us that during the morning they will be waking up Veronika from an induced coma so they will let us know about her condition. After she woke up, she was smiling like she always did and didn´t show any signs of a self-pity. After three days, Veronika was told by her psychologist that her spinal cord is hurt very seriously and that she must use a wheelchair. Surprisingly, she took this message positively and showed us how much brave and strong daughter we have. She spent 12 days at an intensive care unit in Klagenfurt´s hospital. Veronika was fighting and later on her wounded lung was stable enough, that she was ready for her transport to Czech Republic, along with two Austrian doctors.

After landing in Mošnov airport, there was an ambulance waiting for us to transport us to the hospital in Ostrava to Anaesthesiological-resuscitation unit for children. She spent 4 days in there and then she was transported to the Spinal unit for adults because there is no unit for children with these injuries in Czech Republic. She has started with her rehabilitations there, and she spent there almost two and a half month. This whole time we had been gathering information about where Veronika will attend first intensive rehabilitation. We chose Hamza´s clinic in Luže Košumberk.

She started with her rehabilitation in Košumberk on 10th February 2016 accompanied by her mother. The next day she started with an intensive rehabilitation and she started to attend a school which was in the same building. This rehabilitation ended on 10th May 2016. After a recommendation of a psychologist Veronika had a month and a half long break, to get back into her home environment and among her friends and classmates. We had been practising at home the whole time. In June, we travelled every day after school to sanatorium in Klimkovice, where she later on spent her summer holidays. After her return, we have started to visit a specialized clinic in Olomouc, where they use the Vojta´s method, which we have been practising 2 times a day and we regularly travel to Teplice nad Bečvou for an acupuncture.

Since the accident, we have been looking for possible treatments and gaining experiences of people with a similar faith as we have. We have contacted those families and we found a hope in possible treatment by stem cells. From the interview we concluded that this is a huge chance for us and that we have only two options. The first is to deal with this situation and the second is that we do something about it. We chose the second...

There are many varieties of this treatment in different countries, and every family has different experiences. We have personally met people who went through a treatment in Filipino´s TMC clinic, under the leading of dr. Bernal and they have very positive results. Another clinics doing this treatment are in Switzerland, Belgrade, China, Thailand, Moscow and in Israel. We found out that in Israel, they achieve the best results. We heard about doc. MUDr. Petr Vondráček, Ph.D. and his a decade long cooperation with Israel clinic CTCI in Tel Aviv, which deals with cell therapy.

We have visited doc. Vondráček in his office and we were consulted Veronika´s condition. We know that this treatment is still in a research, but doc. Vondráček told us that there is always a chance. We have also contacted a woman whose daughter has similar diagnosis (quadruplegic) like Veronika and she has gone through this treatment three times. Right after first treatment, they have seen results.

This treatment with stem cells is very expensive, but this can´t discourage us. No-one can guarantee that this will help, because each patient is unique. We are very lucky that Veronika is very patient and brave. Young organism has bigger regenerative abilities and that´s why is important to begin with the therapy as soon as possible. We all still believe that the day of a huge progress will come.

We would like to thank everyone who has been helping us to win this fight. The doctors, nurses, friends and family, even those who don´t know us and still willingly offer us their help. We also thank those who chooses to contribute to Veronika´s treatment. We appreciate it very much. 

Mother and father