vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #616 / Social life / Reading article...

In her classes, she writes holding a pen with her toes. At home, she brushes her teeth holding a toothbrush with her knees. A 16-year-old Primorye girl, who lost both of her arms six years ago, only recently has received hope to travel to St. Petersburg for an operation.

Nastya Papizhuk, a resident of the settlement of Krasny Yar near the town of Ussurisk, was raised in a dysfunctional family together with her brother by her alcoholic mother and step-father. At the age of ten, she ran away from her family to live in a military unit, where she stumbled into an open transformer unit wanting to use it as a toilet which resulted in the injury to her arms and their amputation.

Spending about a year in the hospital, Nastya underwent 15 operations. The boarding school, where she had studied for almost three years prior to the incident, refused to take her in fearing she would become a burden.

For several years following the injury, Nastya lived with an unfavorable family. Then in December 2006 she was accepted into a social rehabilitation center in the settlement of Krasny Yar, where she currently lives, with her mother having died and step father in prison.



Nastya is a ninth grade student at an Ussurisk school showing decent results in her studies and dreams of entering the university to become a computer programmer. In her classes, she writes holding a pen with her toes. “My roommates always help me,” Nastya says. When asked how she is able to eat, she answers with a slight smile: “I lap the food up. I do not want to hold the spoon with my feet.”

Despite her difficult fate, the young girl has not become spiteful towards the world in hopes for something better. Still, such a drastic physical injury has had its effect on the girl – it can be felt in her look and in the tone of voice which sometimes becomes shrill.

In November 2007 Primorye’s branch of Children’s Fund learnt of her story and initiated a campaign to raise money for buying prosthetic limbs. Currently, a total of 247,000 rubles ($10,292) has been donated by Primorye’s residents and organizations in an attempt to help the girl.

Initially, the Fund specialists considered sending Nastya to South Korea for the operation but later learned that both S. Korean clinics and those in St. Petersburg use similar Germany-produced prosthetic devices and contacted the clinic in St. Petersburg. However, certain difficulties emerged – the girl did not even have her passport because she lacked proper status due to bureaucratic issues. The problem was settled only after a phone call made by the head of Primorye’s branch of Children Fund, Yekaterina Khomechko, to Ussurisk’s administration.

On Saturday, together with her assistant, Doctor Larisa Snovalnikova, Nastya leaves for St. Petersburg, where she will undergo the first operation to get her arm stumps prepared for prosthetic devices. The operation is free of charge – however, the two will have to spend money on hotel expenses as well as food and further medical examinations. The rehabilitation period will take about two months.

“I just could not stay indifferent for the girl’s life, since I myself have three children. The difference is that my children are surrounded by the atmosphere of love and joy, while others do not even have any hope for getting care,” Snovalnikova says.

Upon returning to Vladivostok after the operation, Nastya will be welcomed into the Stekolshchikov family, who along with their own three children raise 13 adopted children.