Woodland Hills : March of Dimes Girl Has Riches of Health

Scrambling around her parents’ Woodland Hills living room, 5-year-old Marissa Shaevel proudly displays her mini-CD player, her baby doll and the balloons she took home from the Tournament of Roses parade.

She stops long enough to look up at her mother with long-lashed brown eyes and whisper in her ear.

With a little urging, Marissa earnestly explains her mission as the 1996 national ambassador for the March of Dimes: “I make friends and I help children.”

That’s just the beginning, really.

The girl with the curly, brown hair and megawatt smile serves as the March of Dimes’ living testament to the value of infant and prenatal care. Without saying a word, Marissa vividly illustrates that seriously ill children can recover and lead happy, healthy lives.

Marissa was born two months prematurely and weighed just two pounds, five ounces. Her body was barely the length of her father’s hand. Her lungs were underdeveloped. Her ureter, the tube connecting the kidney to the bladder, was blocked.

“Twenty years ago, she wouldn’t have lived,” said her father, Steven Shaevel. “The night she was born, we didn’t know if she was going to make it,” added mother Gail.

“But I thought, ‘God, if she survives, we will do whatever we can to get this point across: A baby can be born this way, but there’s so much medicine can do for her,’ ” Gail said.

Within five weeks of her birth, Marissa left the UCLA Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit and went to Los Angeles Childrens Hospital for the first of six operations to repair her ureter and establish normal kidney drainage.

It was a painful few years for parents and child, but Marissa is fully recovered. Now enrolled in kindergarten, she likes to read, play the piano with her father, dance and talk.

“She’s always talking,” said her father. As she approaches her sixth birthday Friday, she giggles that she is looking forward to traveling and meeting March of Dimes volunteers.

And, Marissa confides in hushed tones, “The March of Dimes ambassador gets to go to Washington and meet the president.”

Chances are she’ll have plenty to say about health care.