"It would be hard to call the family into which I and my three sisters were born a happy one. But you can’t choose your parents, and I thank God for my family," says Leonid.
My autobiography won’t sound very nice either. I’ll start my story from the moment I decided to change my life. No one is born a gangster, a drug addict, or an alcoholic. Due to various circumstances, we sometimes lose our way and choose the wrong path. That’s what happened in my life. Until… until I said, “Stop, I don’t want to live like this,” and went to a Christian rehabilitation center. I successfully completed rehab and stayed there to live and help others like I once was. I know that one of my sisters prayed for me constantly. As a result, I came to God, and my consciousness, my way of thinking, began to change little by little.
Starting my life with a clean slate, I began taking care of my body—exercise, proper nutrition, and so on. I decided to get checked out—the diagnosis: “chronic hepatitis C” didn’t bode well! I knew it was a “silent killer,” and getting rid of it would require a lot of money. I didn’t have a penny to my name. All I had was my dog, an American Pit Bull named Rema. Sell the dog to pay for treatment? Are you kidding??? You don’t sell friends. Rema still lives with me at the rehabilitation center. So, I saw no way out... until... Until I was advised to contact the “Hepatitis C Winners Club.” The Club’s director encouraged me: treatment effectiveness today is 95–99%, but the cost of the course is up to 13,000 hryvnias. Of course, I didn’t have that kind of money. I could only afford the diagnostic tests, specifically at the facility Yuriy Voynalovich recommended. Thanks to that and some discount coupons, all my tests cost me 2,800 hryvnias, even though I’d heard from others that it costs at least 5,000–7,000.
Then he referred me to a wonderful doctor—infectious disease specialist Natalia Andrushchenko. She prescribed a treatment regimen with direct-acting antivirals and provided counseling throughout the entire 12 weeks of treatment. The medications were provided free of charge through the “Diagnose and Treat Hepatitis—It’s Affordable and Effective” Project. I believe that God helped me recover from hepatitis C in this way. Now I am healthy and feel great. I am helping to build a new rehabilitation center. My friend Rema is always by my side. And now I can’t help but wonder where I would be if it weren’t for God and the people He sent. Right now, my life is just beginning, and many good things await me. And most importantly, I have a future. And I believe—it’s wonderful!!! I am deeply grateful to the Club’s team for the opportunity to be cured.
