ZEYNEP AKGÜL

Ankara- Çiğdem Kuzucu lost her son Erdi Berkay Gülmez to leukemia when he was 19 years old. Since his death, she has struggled to honor his name and to support particularly adult leukemia patients. Stating that there is awareness about childhood leukemia but not about adult leukemia, Çiğdem aims to draw attention to adult patients with leukemia.

“When people think of leukemia, children come to mind but not adults with leukemia. Aid campaigns are usually launched for children but adult patients are never mentioned. Most people are already sensitive to childhood leukemia so we want to raise awareness for adult patients with leukemia,” said Çiğdem, who draw attention to the importance of their social media group called, “1000 Gönüllüden 1’i de Sen Olur musun? (Can You Be One of 1000 Volunteers?)”

Kuzucu lost her aunts and cousins to cancer, “One day, my son was diagnosed with cancer. My son had long hair and he loved his hair. Long hair was forbidden at schools. He left school to not cut his hair. I sent him to work in the industrial zone in order to punish him for leaving the school. He would go to the industrial zone that year and then he would return to school but he liked working in the industrial zone. Working there became a reward for him. Then, he lost weight, his skin was pale and he couldn’t eat anything. We could see each other only at night so I didn’t realize how bad he was. He barely walked for a week and one day he fell down at work. His employer took him to a hospital but doctors found nothing. He didn’t like going to hospitals but I asked him to have a blood test. He accepted it. The next day, we received the result and doctors sent us to the hematology department. Then, he was hospitalized in the Oncology Hospital.”

After her son was hospitalized, Çiğdem and her son realized the situation they were in but they couldn’t tell each other how it was serious. “We did tell nothing to each other because he didn’t want to upset me, and I didn’t want to upset him…”

“I cried as much as I could”

“The doctor told me ‘Leukemia’. I only remember the word leukemia nothing more. That time, everything collapsed on me. Then, I went out and cried as much as I could. When I went upstairs, my son asked me, ‘Am I going to die of cancer?’ He was a strong boy, he cried once when his hair was cut,” Çiğdem told us.

“I lost him in six months”

Çiğdem lost her son Erdi in 2012, six months after his diagnosis. “My son received four cycles of chemotherapy. He responded to first-line chemotherapy but not to the second and third. I was told there was nothing to do for my son. We began to look for stem cells. My stem cells and my brother's cells were 50% match. The hospital asked for stem cell appropriate for my son from TÜRK KÖK, but they didn’t have. We didn’t have time to look for stem cells more. We (she and her son) got to know each other at the hospital. We became friends there. We had our best days at the hospital. After the second-line chemotherapy, I waited for my son to die.”

“His dream was to establish a blood bank”

Çiğdem talked about what they had witnessed at the hospital, “We look for blood many times. We could find blood but the patients from other cities couldn’t. We bought a hat from Samanpazarı because my son didn’t have hair anymore. Everyone liked that hat so we gave everyone the same hat as a gift. ‘We should put my picture on these hats and sell them to establish a blood bank,’ my son told me. I gave him my word to do this.”

Çiğdem formed a group called “Can You Be One of 1000 Volunteers” on social media to realize her son’s dream. “At first, I began to find blood for the patients. The group consisted of 2-3 people in the beginning but now the group has 15.000 members.”

The group members make wigs for patients suffering hair loss due to cancer treatment. After losing her son Erdi, Çiğdem and the group members have launched campaigns to help patients struggling with cancer and to give them hope.

Çiğdem calls on everyone to donate marrow and blood stem cells. “You will only give blood without any pain. Everyone between the ages of 18-50, who does not have a chronic disease, can be a donor. The procedure to be done is very simple; just give three tubes of blood samples. It will take only five minutes.