Newsletter July 2007

Children’s Hospice

Dear friends:

Despite the fact that July is a holiday month we still have a lot to do in Children’s Hospice in St. Petersburg. On the contrary, we have an opportunity to think of and to work out new projects for the future and to spend more time with the children who stayed in the city.

Every day our specialists visit our new patients in the region “Leningrad”. We have found that many families have to live in a very severe social situation--they have no medicine and their children receive no appropriate care. Parents are not provided with any information with regard to social and medical matters. An ill child is often completely isolated, with no educational opportunities. At present the children in the region are visited only by our medical service. However, we plan for the future that the specialists of our psychological service will also come to the families in order to support ill children and their parents.

Unfortunately, in July we had one more loss from our little patients. Niele K. passed away. She was a merry, open-minded, wise and big-hearted person. We will always keep her in our hearts. Luckily we had time to give a cherished present to her: a gift from her favorite singer Vitas.

On the 4^th of July we were invited to a concert of the choir of First Presbyterian Church of Bellevue, Seattle, USA. Several choir members are our colleagues and work at a hospice in America. Besides an excellent performance, our friends prepared wonderful presents for us. Choir members and friends had made by hand quilts for the children at Children’s Hospice; maybe 70 or more!! These quilts looked so beautiful and merry as they were brought to the stage! A hand made present always has a grain of the master’s soul in it. And there was so much love, cordiality and concern put into these quilts! We gave them to the Children’s Section of the Oncological Research N.N.Petrov-Institute. May these presents protect its little patients from fear, pain and despondency! May they always have only good dreams under these quilts! Another gift was a contribution collected by nurses of this congregation. We are very thankful for these wonderful moments presented to us by our American colleagues! Two choir members even joined a medical team of the Children’s Hospice and visited some of our little patients.

One of our work directions is support of children’s development and education. Since this month a specialist in defectology – Mrs. Elvira A. V’alkova - cares for our children. She will regularly carry out developing lessons for those children who lag behind in their studies because of their illness. We consider that it is impossible to improve one’s life quality without providing conditions for a child’s development, for improving his talents and interests. A disease may not become a barrier for receiving a high-quality education by our patients and we try to ensure such a possibility for them.

Our little patients told us very often about their wish to learn to paint, to model and to make articles by hand. Since this month our children may every week attend lessons at the Craft School of the Ethnographical Museum of St. Petersburg. They already had lessons in manufacturing dolls and in painting on the wood. These lessons are especially valuable because our children do all exercises together with healthy children. It’s important because it is well-known that one of the reasons of psychological problems of the children with serious diseases is their social isolation.

A special direction of our work is congratulating the children on their birthdays and fulfilling their cherished wishes. The birthday is a special day for every person, especially for an ill kid for whom every year, which he has lived through, is a present and a feat of his family.

We prepared the birthday of Andrey N. with special excitement. His health condition had worsened a lot lately. Firstly we arranged a performance with tricks for Andrey. However, a culminating point of the evening became an unexpected appearance of his best friend Tanya L.

Anya K. has always dreamt of a flight by helicopter over the city. We managed to make her dream came true. On the 28^th of July Anya had an opportunity to admire the astonishing bird’s-eye view of the city. Her shining eyes told us best of all that our venture was a success.

In this issue of our bulletin we’d like to tell you about our pediatrician Olga P. Ivanova. She manages a medical team responsible for children with different kinds of miopathy (muscular dystrophy). It is a serious disease with an unfavorable prognosis. This illness requires very special attention to the ill children and their families. Olga is a young specialist yet, however, the combination of her responsibility, consideration and ability to mix with children makes her a real professional.

With gratitude for your attention and cooperation.

Children’s Hospice, July 2007