[COMMUNICATED] Shai Apergin, Israeli father of 5, was home with his family when he suddenly found it difficult to breath. He was rushed to the emergency room where it was quickly discovered that his lungs were filling with liquid. The liquid was removed, but the source of the flooding was serious: late stage liver disease.In the two years since the ER incident, Shai’s condition has grown increasingly worse. Forced to leave his job as a contractor, he is now bedridden. What should be the face of a healthy young man is now eerily pale. Wife Talya stays home each day to tend to his needs. They have no income to support their children, the youngest of whom is just five years old.
Shai was submitted by doctors to the waiting list for a liver transplant. Unfortunately. over a year and a half has passed, and he has heard nothing from the hospital. The wait is a painful one, as, in Shai’s own words, any day could be his last.
The Apergins have been private about their situation, until recently, when doctors advised that Shai fly to America to receive the liver transplant rather than wait any longer in Israel. Faced with the possibility of his own survival but daunted by the immense expenses of the procedure, he has chosen to turn to the public.
“If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be doing this,” he says in a highly personal video on his crowdfunding campaign page. By “them,” of course, he means the five children who desperately depend upon his survival. At this point Shai’s life, and the lives of everyone in his family, hinge upon the success of this campaign. Whether or not he will succeed in raising the money to receive life-saving surgery has yet to be seen.