His Big Problem Is Growing Up

Seven-year-old Igor Ladan is big for his age. In fact, he’s big for any age. At a height of about 6 feet and a weight of 200 pounds, the Soviet youth has come to Rochester, Minn., hoping that the Mayo Clinic can stop his rapid growth by removing a rare pituitary gland tumor from his skull. Igor’s mother, Svetlana Ladan of Kiev, wrote to doctors in other countries after those in Moscow and Kiev said they could not treat the growth problem, which is caused by too much growth hormone released by the affected gland. Eventually she was referred to the Mayo Clinic and Dr. Donald Zimmerman, who asked the clinic to absorb the costs of Igor’s care because his family does not have the money or insurance for his treatment. A pharmaceutical house agreed to donate medicine, and Igor is taking drugs to shrink the tumor, now about as large as a tennis ball, to a size that doctors hope will allow surgical removal in a few months. Nina Sahulenko, a Ladan relative from Phoenix, is serving as an interpreter for the family. “He’s still a child,” she said. “When there are children around, he will find those his own age.” She said he likes the same things other children do: apple juice, bananas, gum and ice cream.

--Solidarity leader Lech Walesa told a Spanish magazine that in some ways he misses the days when he was jailed by Poland’s Communist officials. “My dream is that they lock me up in prison for 48 hours every week like they used to do. That way I could rest, sleep and relax. Now I sleep little and only have problems,” he told El Pais. When he was only a shipyard electrician, Walesa said, he felt free to do as he pleased after work, but now someone is always wanting to see him. He still lives in Gdansk, he said, because if he moved to Warsaw he would be unable to avoid some things he dislikes, such as “attending dinners or diplomatic receptions.” He said he chose Tadeusz Mazowiecki as Solidarity’s prime minister candidate because it was best for Poland, although “of course this kind of decision will not help me if I intend to make history books.”

--The American songwriter who penned “The White Cliffs of Dover” saw them for the first time, 48 years after the hit from the World War II era. “It’s how I imagined they would be all those years ago,” Walter Kent said as he viewed the chalky cliffs from Dover Castle’s grounds. Kent, who gave an original manuscript to the Dover District Council, said the visit had been his lifelong wish. The manuscript is to be displayed when a tourist center opens in 1991.