Next to the entrance of the Shevchenko family’s apartment sits a three-wheel bike, which is five times the normal size. On the cabinet in the corridor are small leg braces.
With the help of this equipment, 9-year old Kyivan Anna Shevchenko can walk or take a ride in a park, just like any other kid. Born with spina bifida, a backbone defect, she has almost no use of her legs. She can slightly move her right leg, but has no control over her left one.
Despite the disability, Anna attends a regular school and is an aggressive swimmer. Her parents help her dream big and see opportunities instead of obstacles. In Ukraine, compared to disabled children who grow up in one-parent homes with a Hr 750 monthly stipend, she is lucky.
The only child in the family, Anna’s room with dumbbells, a ball and training bars looks like the home fitness center of someone desperate to lose weight.
“This was made by her grandfather,” said Anna’s mother Olga, 33, a tax office worker, as she pointed at a board designed for abdominal training.
“This was made by her grandfather,” said Anna’s mother Olga, 33, a tax office worker, as she pointed at a board designed for abdominal training.
Anna’s athleticism grows with her training regimen of one hour every day. Three times a week she is with her father, once with her therapist and for three days ends up swimming at a pool.
She has ambitious goals. She dreams of winning medals at the Paralympics, a competition that she will qualify for in seven years, when she is 16.
Anna’s parents trained her since she was two. But only one year ago she got serious about swimming. There already is progress. “A year ago she could swim 50 meters in two minutes and 48 seconds, but now she manages to do so in one minute, 44 seconds, which means she has improved her timing by a minute,” her father Serhiy, 34, a courier, said proudly.
Anna goes to a swimming pool to practice with a trainer on weekends.
In one year, Anna transformed from a kid who didn’t know how to swim properly into a very good swimmer.”
– Yuliya Yesypenko, Anna’s trainer.
Anna goes to a swimming pool to practice with a trainer on weekends.
“In one year, she transformed from a kid who didn’t know how to swim properly into a very good swimmer,” said Anna’s trainer, Yuliya Yesypenko, 41. “She is a very hard worker and grasps everything really fast.”
Wearing a green swimsuit and a yellow cap with “Ukraine” written across it, Anna follows her trainer’s task to swim 35 laps in a 25-meter long swimming pool. “Anna is the most promising girl in the group. A lot of parents are not aware [of the opportunities] or just don’t want to bother taking their kid here,” Yesypenko said.
Wearing a green swimsuit and a yellow cap with “Ukraine” written across it, Anna follows her trainer’s task to swim 35 laps in a 25-meter long swimming pool.
Anna is one of 11 disabled kids supervised by Yesypenko.
Among them is a seven-year old girl with cerebral palsy who comes to swim together with her mother, Inna Vynnykova.
She and her daughter are more typical of a Ukrainian family with a disabled child. “Her father left us,” Vynnykova said. “Her twin brother died and now there are three of us: me, my daughter and her grandmother.”
Her ex-husband stayed with the family while there was hope that their child would be able to walk. Once that proved to be impossible, he said he would stay with Vynnykova if they gave the child away to an orphanage. “For me it was like cutting my own hand off. I told him that if he could do it, I couldn’t,” recalled Vynnykova, adding that her ex-husband was ashamed to take their daughter outside in a wheelchair.
Anna Shevchenko’s mother, Olga, is very grateful to have a strong, intact family.
Knowing this, Anna Shevchenko’s mother, Olga, is very grateful to have a strong, intact family. She was also a swimmer during her youth. For her daughter, water is so much more – the only place where she feels free in motion.
To walk, she needs special braces that cost Hr 15,000 and need to be replaced with a new pair every six months. Fortunately, the government provides them free of charge. Anna’s status of “Chornobylets”, someone who was affected by the Chornobyl disaster, entitles her to some governmental support as well.
There may be a correlation between the Chornobyl catastrophe and Anna’s disability.”
– Tatyana Zotova, therapist.
Anna’s mother lived in the town of Prypyat but had to relocate to Kyiv after the explosion of the Chornobyl reactor.
“There may be a correlation between the Chornobyl catastrophe and Anna’s disability,” said therapist Tatyana Zotova, who has been seeing Anna since she was two. Apart from physical exercises, Zotova imparts knowledge.
During the workout she tells her stories about world-famous artists, makes her learn poems by heart and teaches her phrases in English.
“When I challenge her with a difficult exercise, she starts to recite a poem and that helps her to get through it easier,” Zotova said. “A brain needs training as much as the muscles. Feeling sorry is the worst strategy to pick in this case. The child needs love and someone to strengthen her will, which she can take with her for life.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Nataliya Horban can be reached at horban@kyivpost.com.
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