Muscovite Gets a Medical Lift : Health: Many hands came together to arrange surgery for a 19-year-old suffering water on the brain.

It’s a heaviness that drifted in and out of his young life.

In the worst instances, he suffered paralysis and blindness. During better times, it was just the same nagging headache he has had since the age of 3.

A 40-minute operation at Sharp Memorial Hospital, completed this week, may be all Andrey Ignatiev needs to rid himself of the pain.

The 19-year-old Muscovite traveled around the world to undergo surgery for hydrocephalus, commonly known as water on the brain, which began when Ignatiev was a toddler. His condition resulted from infections that followed removal of a brain tumor at age 2.

For about a decade and a half, Ignatiev’s hydrocephalus symptoms were confused with the aftereffects of brain surgery. Ignatiev led a limited, but active, life and was studying in vocational school to become an electronics technician. In the last two years, however, his condition deteriorated severely.

Ignatiev’s mother, Raisa, witnessed the unexplained downturn in her son’s health and began searching for medical help. After learning the diagnosis, the next hurdle was to find treatment.

It was early 1991, and Raisa Ignatiev felt helpless. She saw paralysis setting in--Andrey had begun listing to the left when trying to stand straight. At times, his right arm and leg became spastic. The pain, he said, began giving way to a numbing sense of drowsiness.

Raisa Ignatiev, an administrator at the Russian government broadcasting company, said waiting lists for operations in Russia were long; the application process complex. She managed to schedule an operation--for October, 1992.

Raisa worried: would Andrey make it?

An answer was to come from thousands of miles away.

Andrey Ignatiev’s condition came to the attention of a television news producer at Raisa’s company. An instructional video on hydrocephalus symptoms was produced, using Andrey’s condition as an example. Andrey’s case was rare, his doctor at Sharp, Randall Smith, said, because it had continued for so long.

The producer, Dilbar Yablokov, sent the video, along with a plea for help, to the United States via her husband, Alexey Yablokov. Alexey Yablokov is an environmental adviser to Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

Here, the pieces began to fall into place.

Many of them fell in San Diego.

Alexey Yablokov’s journeys brought him to La Jolla, to Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he explained the young man’s plight to Witold Klawe, a fellow scientist. Klawe and Rancho Bernardo retiree Don Van Ness, another San Diego acquaintance of Alexey Yablokov’s, then took over.

Klawe and Van Ness hustled up aid from doctors and administrators at Sharp. The hospital donated more than $12,000 in surgical and patient care costs. The Horizon International Church of San Diego and American Airlines donated more than $3,000 travel fare from Moscow to San Diego.

In the United States, hydrocephalus that occurs in infants is usually detected early, and treatment is relatively routine, Smith said.

“Neurosurgery 101,” Smith said, in describing the procedure done Tuesday to insert a shunt, or plastic tube, behind Ignatiev’s right ear. The shunt travels under the skin to the abdominal cavity, where fluid is deposited, Smith said.

Normally the adult brain has a 1-ounce cushion of fluid separating it from the skull. Any more and the brain compresses, causing it to malfunction. The affected area in Andrey’s brain controlled motor coordination, Smith said.

“Andrey had about five to 10 times the normal amount of fluid in his head,” Smith said.

Ignatiev was walking without assistance a few hours after the operation, Smith said.

He is expected to be released from the hospital today and will stay with his mother at the Klawe home in La Jolla for at least six weeks.

In his hospital room Thursday, Ignatiev munched on potato chips with lunch and briefly spoke to reporters.

While still unclear about the specifics of his benefactors, Ignatiev said he knew what he felt.

“Thank you,” he said.