By Lindsay Fortado, Daily News Writer
New York Daily News, New York, NY, April 1, 2004

"She's my child, she's my life," mom Vera Tkachuk, 24, said through a translator at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.

Even though the 20-month-old girl cannot speak, she showed her happiness by loudly gurgling and pointing at a cartoon mouse as she curled up in her mom's arms.

"See? She's excited," Vera Tkachuk said. "That's how she laughs."

The girl was born in perfect health, but a rare bacterial infection paralyzed her vocal cords and ate away the cartilage in her nose.

She breathes through a tube in her neck that allows air to reach her lungs.

Finally, a Ukrainian-American group, the Children of Chornobyl Relief Fund, agreed to bring Mariyka to New York for surgery on her throat.

Dr. Oleh Slupchynskyj, a second-generation Ukrainian-American, visited the family twice in Kiev and agreed to perform the operation for free.

The surgery was to have been performed at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. But doctors discovered an unexpected narrowing in Mariyka's windpipe, which needs to be corrected before the other operation.

Now, Mariyka needs about $15,000 for the unforeseen surgery. Otherwise, she will return to the Ukraine without the help she needs.

Even if the girl gets the operation, she will need another procedure to repair her nose when she reaches puberty.

Doctors will perform cosmetic surgery to alter her nose, now only a round nub of flesh and stitches holding a small tube that keeps the space open. "She may never have a perfect nose," Slupchynskyj said. "But she'll be able to look normal."

Back in her hospital room, Mariyka buries her face in her mother's shoulder, her exhaustion showing after a long day of tests and prodding.

She holds tight to a cream-colored teddy bear, the fur worn thin from months of clutching.

"For some people it seems like a hard life," Vera Tkachuk said. "But I'd do anything for her. I do it with a full heart."