Wife Makes Her Man Crippled But He Still Hopeful

An angry woman can ruins a man's life

Last year Igor Rogozin had a good job, an apartment and a family - wife and daughter. This year Igor was operated on, he has bedsores, he suffers from terrible pains in his legs at night. Until recently, the 33-year-old man was afraid of thinking of his future.

The tragedy took place two years ago. When he returned home from work, he had a fight with his wife. He said that it had happened many times before too, often for stupid reasons, although the spouses put up with each other quickly. However, Natasha, Igor's wife, decided to teach her husband a lesson - she rushed upstairs to their neighbors to ask for help. The neighbors were having a party at that moment, so it did not take Natasha much to explain everything to a group of drunk men. They wanted to have some adventure, so they hurried to punish their neighbor. During a fight, the men simply thew Igor out of the window on the third storey. The man fell down on the concrete ground, having broken ribs and the spine. Igor managed to survive, although it would be better to say that he was born again. The new Igor could not walk, though.

Doctors did not want to tell him anything about his future, they did not have all answers to the questions of the present either. Doctors told him to stay in bed, and after a while Igor could hardly bend his legs. His wife Natasha showed up at the hospital twice. At first, she came to see Igor right after the operation, which lasted for several hours. She even begged him to forgive her. Igor simply told her that he did not want to see her anymore. After a while, she came back again with their daughter and told Igor that they were leaving him. Natasha did not even let him say goodbye to his 9-year-old girl.

Igor wanted to kill himself. He started reaching out for a window, but then managed to take a grip on himself. "I went into hysterics after that. It took nurses and doctors long to calm me down. I remember I was saying one phrase over and over again - "I did not ask her anything, I just wanted to say goodbye to my little girl!"

People break up for various reasons. Someone said that happy families all look like one another, although their problems are always different. It does not seem that Igor's family broke apart because of his disablement, it is hard to say who is right and who is wrong here. Troubles usually bring people closer to each other, although this rule did not work for Igor's family.

Since that time, the man never bothered his wife. Natasha will never know, how long he had to stay at hospitals, moving form one town to another. Igor was absolutely alone and there was no place for him to go: his parents died several years ago, he had no siblings, he was the only child in the family. His relatives in Kiev did not want to take care of the disabled man.

"It was moving from one hospital to another for two years. I just had no place where I could stay. A little bit later, they would not even let me stay at hospitals, because doctors understood that I needed no medicines but a roof over my head," Igor said.

However, there are kind people in the world. Igor was given a wheelchair in one of the hospitals. He remembers that he had to crawl on his hands to move until he was given that chair. Once it took him several hours to crawl on his hands and knees to hospital. When he obtained the wheelchair, he started spending hours outside, learning how to ride it. People would look at him with compassion and Igor would close his eyes to hide from such looks.

Igor returned to his hometown of Belaya Tserkov (White Church). He had to live at the railway station for several days in winter, it was very cold, but he only had a pair of worn-out summer shoes. He could not stand the cold for long, so he called an ambulance. Soon he found himself in the neurologic department of the Belaya Tserkov hospital. Igor stayed there for four months, in spite of the fact that the rules allowed only 12 days. He recollects that time as the best time of his bitter life. Tamara Budnikova, the manager of the department obtained a certificate of a disabled person for him. "We felt terribly sorry about him, so we allowed him to stay at the hospital. But we could not keep him forever. He does not live with us now, but we still help him the best we can," Tamara says.

Igor has been living for a month on a small bench in front of the hospital. The hospital personnel share clothes and shoes with him, nurses help him to wash the clothes. Igor says that he asks for help on rare occasions - he does not want to bother people. He tries to wash his clothes himself when he can.

"I have always been a tough guy. I was never quiet, I loved doing wild things, so I try not to give way to despair now," he says. He starts his every day with visiting various social security offices. Officials tell him that he will be taken to a shelter for disabled people in about three months.

They say that if someone is born an invalid, it will be easier for them to live, because they do not know, what it feels like to be a healthy human being. It goes without saying that it is a terrible tragedy for a healthy person to lose the luxury of being healthy. "If someone told me that I would not be able to walk someday, I would never believe that lunatic. Words can not express how I feel. However, I did not ruin myself by drinking, I did not go crazy with pain. I believe that I will start walking! When I was operated on, doctors told me that I would not be able to walk, although my legs started moving afterwards. When I started walking with crutches, everybody was surprised with my success. I think I have a way to go."

Oksana Geydor
Segodnya