Boy, 2, Returns to Soviet Union After Surgery

Sporting a New York Yankees baseball cap and a smile, a 2-year-old Russian boy rushed to New York more than three months ago for emergency brain tumor surgery left for home Friday with his mother and dozens of bags of gifts.

Kirill Podorozhansky had been suffering from a life-threatening tumor that had swollen his head to the size of an adult’s and had severely stunted his physical and mental growth.

His skull was remodeled after the tumor was removed. Although Kirill will continue to recover, he will always be mildly retarded because of brain damage caused by the tumor, neurosurgeon James Goodrich said.

Soviet doctors, who diagnosed the tumor in May, had told the boy’s family there was little they could do for him.

Despairing, they wrote to the Voice of America in Washington. The Voice of America contacted Marcy Rogers of the International Craniofacial Foundations in Dallas, who in turn made arrangements with Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx for the surgery.

The result not only was free medical care and a new life for Kirill but also a new medical exchange program between the Dallas foundation and the Lenin Children’s Fund and the Soviet Ministry of Health in Moscow.