Walking Again : High-Tech Prosthesis and Rehabilitation for a Soviet Amputee Stem From an Understanding American’s Determined Efforts

Anatoli Mysikov is 6,000 miles from home, staying in Washington with strangers who do not speak his language and struggling through daily physical therapy in an effort to break habits he has had most of his adult life.

The 29-year-old Russian is essentially learning how to walk again. And he couldn’t be happier--or more grateful to the American who made it all happen.

Mysikov was a soldier in the Soviet army in Afghanistan in 1982 when he lost his right leg above the knee to mortar fire. Sent home for treatment, he was fitted with a standard-issue Soviet prosthesis that was 2 inches short and had a locked knee, causing him to walk with a pronounced limp and severely limiting his mobility.

For several weeks, he has been undergoing physical therapy at the National Rehabilitation Hospital here, learning how to use a custom-fitted prosthesis with a flexible hydraulic knee, a so-called Flex-Foot that allows him to walk without a limp.

The tab for this will come to about $17,000, far beyond Mysikov’s means. But because of the relentless efforts of a 61-year-old American who lost a leg from a Korean War wound, not a ruble is coming from Mysikov’s pockets. Everything is donated.

“ Glasnost medicine,” said Brynda Pappas, a hospital spokeswoman.

The credit, everyone agrees, goes to Irvin Axelrod, an agricultural expert with the Commerce Department who heard about Mysikov’s problem last spring. Having suffered a similar injury, the Arlington, Va., resident said, he immediately empathized with the young Russian and set out to persuade others to help him.

Axelrod got Flex-Foot Inc., a prosthesis company in California, to donate the high-tech prosthetic shin, foot and ankle, worth about $1,700. He got Nascott Rehabilitation Services to ask other prosthetic manufacturers to donate parts and the National Rehabilitation Hospital and Nascott to contribute the therapy.

When Nascott said it needed Mysikov’s medical records, Axelrod persuaded a Russian-speaking lawyer friend to translate them free. Axelrod got a service that provides housing for visiting foreign business people to find a couple who took in not only Mysikov but also his older brother, Boris--on the house.

Axelrod’s efforts on behalf of Mysikov began in March at the Cornhusker Hotel in Lincoln, Neb. Axelrod was among a group of American agricultural experts accompanying Soviet officials on a Midwestern tour to show them how to make better use of food resources.

One night it snowed, and Axelrod arrived at the hotel with a cane, which he used to avoid slipping on the icy ground.

The visitors asked what the cane was for. Axelrod whacked his artificial leg and explained that he had stepped on a mine in Korea in 1951, resulting in a severe wound to his right foot and ankle. In 1983, after numerous operations, Axelrod’s leg was amputated, and he learned to use a Flex-Foot prosthesis.

“They were very impressed, because none of them could tell I had a prosthesis,” Axelrod said. Through an interpreter, one of the Soviets asked Axelrod if he could help Mysikov, the chief accountant at his plant.

Axelrod gathered literature on state-of-the-art prosthetics to send to the young man but decided that wasn’t enough. “What use would that be, some brochures in English?” he asked. The more he thought about the Soviet man limping around on a too-short prosthesis, the more he wanted to help.

He started making calls, at first trying to get financial help from his contacts in the food industry. Although he was turned down more than once, Axelrod kept at it.

“I became impassioned about trying to help this guy,” he said. “I couldn’t quit. The more I got turned down, the more determined I got.”

Little by little, Axelrod made progress, and after five months all that remained was to get Mysikov to the United States. Mysikov’s co-workers at a corn-processing plant in the village of Beslan took care of that, voting to use profits from the plant to pay the brothers’ air fares.

They arrived on Oct. 20, and Axelrod greeted Anatoli with a bearhug.

Mysikov’s therapists said he is making good progress. During one recent session, Sherri Lamothe, a hospital therapist, said the stocky visitor affectionately calls her “Sarge.” He is expected to return home in January.

Asked to compare his new prosthesis to his old one, which requires him to use a cane, Mysikov said through an interpreter, “There is no comparison.”

Axelrod seems to have gotten almost as much out of the effort as Mysikov.

“This is the greatest thing I’ve done in my life. Everyone who hears about this thinks it’s a wonderful thing and wants to participate,” said Axelrod, an effusive man who can answer a simple question with an hourlong soliloquy about how outdated Mysikov’s old prosthesis was, how much better his new one will be, the kindness strangers have shown, even his parents’ roots in Russia.

But he said he has no plans to repeat his efforts on behalf of others like Mysikov. The experience was exhausting, he said, adding, “I don’t know if I could do this again.”

Even in this age of thawed superpower relations, Axelrod said, some of his friends and acquaintances have criticized him for helping Mysikov, whom some still regard as an enemy. Axelrod is having none of it.

“I say, hey, I’m not helping the Soviets,” he said. “I’m helping a human being.”