We haven’t written about Anya in a while, so I thought it was time to catch you up on what’s been happening to her. You can read about her and the surgery she went through last year here.
Us with Anya at the beginning of school year
Anya, was born with a deformed hip and one leg shorter than the other, so she’s always walked with a pronounced limp. A year and a half ago, we learned that if she didn’t have surgery to repair some of these defects, then soon, her condition would start to degenerate and eventually she would be unable to walk. So Doug, our team leader, started working on getting her that operation. After months and months of hounding the doctors and trying to get the cooperation of the orphanage staff and Anya’s alcoholic mom, Doug got her into the hospital. Then Anya sat in the hospital for a month before surgery happened. After all was said and done, the hospital didn’t do any physical therapy, so Anya’s recovery was only a fraction of what it should have been. All this took place last spring, and Anya wasn’t excited about the idea of going through it again.
Anya with Janna and Ira and Nadia from Safe Haven last year after her operation
We knew that she needed another operation or two. So last September, Doug started calling the doctors again, and trying to line up when we could bring Anya in for operation number 2. After setting up an appointment, we brought Anya to Kiev one weekend last fall, but on Monday when Doug showed up to the hospital he was told that the doctor had left on vacation. So, that morning instead of checking Anya into the hospital, he made the three hour drive to take her back to the orphanage.
Finally in December, we got Anya checked into the hospital. They had a minor operation where they put three steel rings around her leg and for the next forty days they would slowly adjust the setting to stretch her leg 1 mm per day. That forty days stretched into over three months, and just today Anya got the rings taken off her leg.
So, for the last three months Anya has been in the hospital. And most of that time she has been alone. Doug has visited her about every other day. Janna and I try to visit as often as we can, bringing food, pictures and games to play. We’ve decided to stay away any time we got sick though, which is more often than we have liked this winter. We’ve had friends visit her and a couple of girls that work with us have gone and stayed with Anya for a few days.
She’s been mobile this time (last time her whole lower half was in a cast for a month). She has crutches, and can get around. Usually the mom’s of her roommates will help take care of her.
But she hasn’t left the hospital in three months. Her mom hasn’t been down to visit her. It’s been, as always, boring.
We have had some good times though. In January, I took Anya her Christmas present. We had given all the kids at the orphanage some colored pencils, a couple of nice notebooks, a photo album full of pictures of themselves and a few other things. Anya thought the notebooks were awesome and she kept rubbing the cover. But her favorite thing was the photo album. We had pictures of her with some of her friends in the orphanage. We had pictures of our team doing a puzzle with her in Smile House while she was laid up in the cast last year. There was even a picture of her with her mom and grandma from last summer. That day we talked a little bit and then Anya would look through the photo album again. We played a game of sorry, and twice Anya stopped the game to look through her pictures. Most of the kids from the orphanages don’t have any pictures of themselves, so it was really rewarding to see her enjoying this little present so much. It made the hours we spent sorting pictures totally worth it.
She was originally supposed to be in the hospital for forty days, and then they would put a cast on her leg and send her back to the orphanage. So at the end of January, Doug met with the doctor and learned that they needed ten more days to stretch her leg a little more. That was forty days ago. We have occasionally wondered if maybe it would have been better to raise the money to send Anya to the US for an operation and physical therapy. The constant inability to make and stick to any type of a schedule is one of the biggest reasons for our lack of confidence in the medical system in Ukraine.
But the good thing was, the doctor’s kept saying that she probably wouldn’t need another surgery. So Anya needed to endure three months in the hospital, but then she would be done. No more operations. No more hospital. We could all live with that.
So yesterday, Doug learned that Anya would be getting the steel rings taken off today. She would need a small cast on part of her leg, but she would be mobile. All the surgeries were over and she would be able to go with us to the orphanage with us tomorrow on Wednesday. It was perfect, we wouldn’t even need to make a special trip.
Then Doug showed up at the hospital today and and a different doctor told them a much different story. They learned that Anya would need a full leg cast with a band around her hips. She’ll be mobile, but just barely. And he told them that she would need to stay in the hospital for another month. After three straight months in the hospital, this was terrible news. Anya wanted to get out.
The doctor also told Anya that she needed one more major surgery, like she had last year. Doug was there with her. She was crying as they rolled her in to have the operation to remove the steel rings. She is tired of dealing with all of this.
Anya is 15, she turns 16 this summer. Her body is too old to endure these types of major surgery easily. But the most frustrating part is that we can never get straight answers from the doctors. Sadly, all of this is just a paradigm of the way that kids from the orphanage are viewed and dealt with in Ukraine.
And that’s why God has placed us here. Because if Doug hadn’t fought to get Anya her operations, she would be inching forward to a day when she couldn’t walk at all. No one else was going to help her. It’s always going to be an uphill battle, but we believe these kids are worth it.
Please keep Anya in your prayers.
Us with Anya at the beginning of school year
Anya with Janna and Ira and Nadia from Safe Haven last year after her operation
Finally in December, we got Anya checked into the hospital. They had a minor operation where they put three steel rings around her leg and for the next forty days they would slowly adjust the setting to stretch her leg 1 mm per day. That forty days stretched into over three months, and just today Anya got the rings taken off her leg.
So, for the last three months Anya has been in the hospital. And most of that time she has been alone. Doug has visited her about every other day. Janna and I try to visit as often as we can, bringing food, pictures and games to play. We’ve decided to stay away any time we got sick though, which is more often than we have liked this winter. We’ve had friends visit her and a couple of girls that work with us have gone and stayed with Anya for a few days.
She’s been mobile this time (last time her whole lower half was in a cast for a month). She has crutches, and can get around. Usually the mom’s of her roommates will help take care of her.
But she hasn’t left the hospital in three months. Her mom hasn’t been down to visit her. It’s been, as always, boring.
We have had some good times though. In January, I took Anya her Christmas present. We had given all the kids at the orphanage some colored pencils, a couple of nice notebooks, a photo album full of pictures of themselves and a few other things. Anya thought the notebooks were awesome and she kept rubbing the cover. But her favorite thing was the photo album. We had pictures of her with some of her friends in the orphanage. We had pictures of our team doing a puzzle with her in Smile House while she was laid up in the cast last year. There was even a picture of her with her mom and grandma from last summer. That day we talked a little bit and then Anya would look through the photo album again. We played a game of sorry, and twice Anya stopped the game to look through her pictures. Most of the kids from the orphanages don’t have any pictures of themselves, so it was really rewarding to see her enjoying this little present so much. It made the hours we spent sorting pictures totally worth it.
She was originally supposed to be in the hospital for forty days, and then they would put a cast on her leg and send her back to the orphanage. So at the end of January, Doug met with the doctor and learned that they needed ten more days to stretch her leg a little more. That was forty days ago. We have occasionally wondered if maybe it would have been better to raise the money to send Anya to the US for an operation and physical therapy. The constant inability to make and stick to any type of a schedule is one of the biggest reasons for our lack of confidence in the medical system in Ukraine.
But the good thing was, the doctor’s kept saying that she probably wouldn’t need another surgery. So Anya needed to endure three months in the hospital, but then she would be done. No more operations. No more hospital. We could all live with that.
So yesterday, Doug learned that Anya would be getting the steel rings taken off today. She would need a small cast on part of her leg, but she would be mobile. All the surgeries were over and she would be able to go with us to the orphanage with us tomorrow on Wednesday. It was perfect, we wouldn’t even need to make a special trip.
Then Doug showed up at the hospital today and and a different doctor told them a much different story. They learned that Anya would need a full leg cast with a band around her hips. She’ll be mobile, but just barely. And he told them that she would need to stay in the hospital for another month. After three straight months in the hospital, this was terrible news. Anya wanted to get out.
The doctor also told Anya that she needed one more major surgery, like she had last year. Doug was there with her. She was crying as they rolled her in to have the operation to remove the steel rings. She is tired of dealing with all of this.
Anya is 15, she turns 16 this summer. Her body is too old to endure these types of major surgery easily. But the most frustrating part is that we can never get straight answers from the doctors. Sadly, all of this is just a paradigm of the way that kids from the orphanage are viewed and dealt with in Ukraine.
And that’s why God has placed us here. Because if Doug hadn’t fought to get Anya her operations, she would be inching forward to a day when she couldn’t walk at all. No one else was going to help her. It’s always going to be an uphill battle, but we believe these kids are worth it.
Please keep Anya in your prayers.
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