Burned Ukrainian boy jubilant over treatment in U.S.

Ihor lies on a bed during a therapy session last month in Boston.

Ihor Lakatosh struggles to describe his life before the surgeries, when his severe burns went untreated for years in his native Ukraine, leaving him with one arm fused to his body, unable to walk and abandoned by his mother.

The 11-year-old boy, however, smiles widely and makes the sign of the cross when he describes how he feels now, after a series of surgeries and physical therapy at a Boston charity hospital.

"Thank you, I can walk. Thank you, I can walk. Thank you, Lord, I can walk," he said recently through an interpreter.

Ihor returned to Boston this year for a second round of procedures and has been showing off his newfound ability to walk, take off his jacket and climb onto a bed.

No one knows the details of the fire that burned 30 percent of Ihor's body when he was about 3. He was severely malnourished and unable to walk or bend his arms when neighbors in Lviv, Ukraine, urged his mother to take him to a hospital in 2011, doctors said. She did, and she never came back.

The hospital provided minor care. Staffers there thought he was mentally impaired and took him to a special orphanage for children with cerebral palsy. The orphanage director contacted a Ukrainian burn physician, who got in touch with Boston-based anesthesiologist Dr. Gennadiy Fuzaylov.

Fuzaylov and plastic surgeon Dr. Daniel Driscoll run a nonprofit organization, Doctors Collaborating to Help Children. Through the organization, they brought Ihor to Boston's Shriners Hospital for Children.

He was about 8 or 9 when he arrived and weighed less than 30 pounds, half the average weight for a boy his age. He hadn't walked since he was burned.

Ihor was sent back to the orphanage in Ukraine after his first set of surgeries and will return there next month. The western Ukraine region where the orphanage is has not been affected by turmoil engulfing eastern parts of the country.

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Burned Ukrainian boy jubilant over treatment in U.S.