Ural Mother Faces Blindness While Caring for Daughter with Cerebral Palsy

In the Ural region, a mother is facing blindness. Yulia Rubtsova has aniridia — a rare congenital disease where the eyes lack an iris. She learned about the illness only four years ago when she flew to Moscow with her children for an eye examination.

The family lives in the settlement of Bulanash, 130 kilometers from Yekaterinburg. Yulia has eight children, two of whom are already adults. Moreover, one of her younger daughters, Antonina, has cerebral palsy, and her 12-year-old son Yaroslav has a developmental delay.

Aniridia did not prevent the mother from caring for her special-needs children until she developed cataracts. Due to the lack of an iris, the damaged eye lenses can only be removed in Moscow. The operation for one eye costs no less than 200,000 rubles (approximately $2,000 at current exchange rates).

«If it»s not done next year, one eye might stop seeing,« the mother of many children admitted. »To be honest, I«m getting scared. If I go blind, I won»t see how the children grow up. That«s the most important thing, because children are everything to me.»

All the family«s money goes towards the rehabilitation of the two special-needs children — every three months, the family takes 12-year-old Yaroslav and 2.5-year-old Tonya to Yekaterinburg by taxi. Saving up for a car is impossible due to expenses on medication, trips, and consultations with specialists.

Not to mention that the house where the large family lives is falling apart, and although the local administration has recognized the building as semi-dilapidated, they have no plans to relocate the residents. Yulia has appealed to the prosecutor«s office and is now awaiting a response. She was promised that a management company would be forcibly assigned to the house to finally undertake major repairs, but so far everything remains as it was.

Watch a video about how the large family lives. We told Yulia Rubtsova«s full story in a separate article.

The editorial staff of E1.RU asks charitable foundations willing to help the large family to open a fundraiser for the children«s rehabilitation or the mother»s operation to come forward.

We reported on the problem of another large family that received land from the state. On their plot, an abandoned gas pipe was found, which jeopardized the entire construction.