A NEW PLACE FOR A FIGHT AGAINST CANCER
ANNA PFRZEWOŹNIK
Cancer illnesses are the biggest plaque of XX and XXI centuries, despite a lot of efforts of the scientific and medical worlds, we are still losing the fight about human life with them.
Grzegorz Bierecki won the fight against cancer – who is a senator of the Polish Republic, the founder and inventor of the Cooperative Credit and Saving unions. Having experienced this illness and seeing how others are struggling with it, he decided to establish a foundation and set up the Centre of Specialist Medicine Sanitas in Gdańsk. The newly created centre is the first place in Poland where there is going to be one of the most effective methods in cancer treatment – histology SD according to prof. Helmut Breuninger.
To get the second life
– It can be said that I am an example of the effectiveness of the method which we are going to use in this clinic. I am a man who gained a chance for further life. it is very obliging, so I decided that I would express my gratitude for this gift, helping others through our foundation – says Grzegorz Bierecki.
Before he found out what illness he had and before he overcame cancer, he had gone to many doctors, and had had many treatments. It started with an illness which had been impossible to be diagnosed for a longer time. In the most visible place of his face – on his forehead – there appeared a growth which slowly but systematically was getting bigger. It turned out that it was a kind of soft tissue sarcoma. It was possible to diagnose the illness in the United States. It turned out that this kind of cancer gives metastases when it activates and gets into lymph nodes.
– I am sure that although I am afraid of big words, that coping with cancer, coping with the coming death is a great experience for the man. It is not easy to experience it, and without a prayer – it is impossible for me to do. I believe that Our Lady to whom I had been praying, showed me a road to Tybing in Germany where the method of treatment was used and about which nobody in Poland heard. In fact it once appeared in Poland but it was trivialized, it was never used even till today – emphasized the founder of the clinic Grzegorz Bierecki. – The chain of events connected with my illness and searching for help led me to prof. Breuninger. I was afraid of death, like every ill man. After all, in my critical moments there was a solution, a kind of a light in a tunnel and my duty is to express may gratitude for it. It is like somebody told me to do it in return for health. I am sure that the Supreme Power has acted.
Treat cheaper and more effectively
A friend of Grzegorz Bierecki, a doctor who travels all over the world a lot and participates in many scientific meetings, found information about an extremely effective method of treatment, worked out by an American doctor Mohs. Thanks to this method the risk was estimated for nearly 2 percent, and thanks to the treatment of the methods in Poland the risk reaches to 58 percent. So the difference was significant.
– I arrived in Tybing. I was surprised because there was no private clinic for VIPs there, and the university hospital, not different from the standard of our hospitals. The local doctors undertook treatment of me after the diagnosis. Prof. Breuninger turned out not only to be an excellent dermatological surgeon but also a great plastic surgeon whose best evidence is me – says Grzegorz Bierecki.
Prof. Breuninger has been treating skin cancer in his Clinic of dermatological-Surgery for years, using the method of micro-graphic surgery of Mohs, developed by himself. Now a team of experienced doctors was trained specially by him in order to use the gained knowledge and indications with benefit for patients of the Sanitas Centre. Prof. Breuninger is going to be a permanent consultant of the Centre, he will also periodically do treatments in the clinic.
– The method of the three-dimensional histology allows for precise defining where a tumor is placed and how it invades, which allows for a very exact removing the ill tissue, maintaining a suitable safety margin and also saving tissues. It gives a very high effectiveness of treatment – over 98 percent of patients are treated effectively. In addition this method is not expensive at all, so it will be very significant from the point of view of Poles’ good – says prof. Breuninger.
What is also important, applying this method is connected with a relatively short time of treatment and no necessity of taking the so-called ‘chemistry’ (pharmacological means). In Europe the method of micro-graphic surgery of Mohs is applied not only in three places, thanks to the senator Bierecki it also arrived in Poland.
– As a patient I asked prof. Breuninger if he would like to help me in implementing this method in Poland because in our poor country treatments are worse and a more expensive. Treating a patient like me cost 180 thousand zlotys in our country, whereas in Germany it cost 36 thousand zlotys. In my case the treatment would be still going on and as a patient I would burden our state budget. I also remind that the risk of the re-appearance of tumor among us in our country is 58 percent. In this difference, in these numbers there is a question why we do not have this cancer treatment in Poland. It should be a task of our public health service.
Opening of the clinic
A solemn opening of the Centre of Specialist Medicine Sanitas in Gdańsk (Pilotów Street 21) took place on 10 October this year. Andrzej Kałużny is going to be the director of the centre, the Councillor of Sopot, the former director of Academic Hospital.
Opening of the Centre was preceded by a press conference during which prof. Breuninger and dr. Jacek Wiejek presented the idea of creating the clinic and the merits of applying the method of Mohs. Prelate priest Ireneusz Skubiś,, the chief editor of the ‘Sunday’ present at the ceremony of opening, gave a statuette of blessed John Paul II to the clinic. In his speech he noted that the Holy Father also had spent many days in clinics and he had known suffering, so he will surely be a good patron of patients and staff of the Centre.
The symbolic ribbon cutting was done by the senator Bierecki, prof. Breuninger and Father Tadeusz Rydzyk CSsR who sanctified the clinic anew.
Senator Bierecki emphasized during the meeting that without the support of his friends – among the others, people like Grzegorz Buczkowski, the chairman of the SKOK association Insurances, Andrzej Sosnowski, the chairman of the Credit Unions, Zbigniew Puniewski – and without the engagement of many friends doctors, among the others, of PhD Piotr Czauderna, he would not have been able to fulfill the commitment which he had undertaken a few years before.
The Centre Sanitas is going to deal with not only skin cancer treatment. In the centre of the Sanitas Foundation, beside skin surgeries there are also supposed to be treatments of general surgery, plastic surgery, pediatric surgery, arm surgery, orthopedics, urology and others. Patients are going to have spacious, surgeries equipped in a modern way, among the others: of internal medicine, laryngological, ophthalmic, gynecological, dermatological, allergic, urological and endocrine.
The clinic is going to function in the private market, but thanks to the cooperation with the Sanitas Foundation, help will be given also to those who cannot afford expensive treatment in other medical centres.
– In this purpose the Sanitas Foundation is going to create a financial reserve assigned for supporting the ill. One of its status purposes is giving help to people experienced by serious, incurable illnesses and waiting for difficult or expensive medical treatments -explains Grzegorz Bierecki. As he emphasizes – the most important is that we should help people here in their recovering from illness, because it is the purpose of the foundation and it is the only thing with which our foundation is going to deal.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 45/2012