Alexander Dovzhansky

Alexander doesn’t require any special accommodations in his day to day life or at work. He’s more than happy to go into the office and he gets on well with his colleagues. Most of them probably don’t even know that he has cerebral palsy.

His condition is the result of a birth trauma, with functionality on the right side of his body partially impaired. Officially, his case is classed as mild. Even this ‘mildness’, however, requires years of intensive rehabilitation, and it never fully goes away.

“My parents didn’t like the idea of drug treatment, so they opted for neurophysical rehabilitation. We went to Professor Volodymyr Kozyavkin’s clinic in Truskavets, Ukraine. Through physical training, exercise equipment and supportive routines, they effectively taught my body to move again and my brain to adapt to the physical reality. In my case, it all worked out,” Alexander recalls.

He spent almost 12 years in intensive rehabilitation, including several breaks. Today, Alexander monitors his body at all times, correcting any relapses. When he gets very tired, his right leg gives way a little, and he can't trust his right hand 100 percent, of course, but he still has complete control over his body, and therefore his life.

In 2022, Alexander moved from Ukraine to Moscow and got a job at Kaspersky. “The most difficult thing for me in the past was accepting what I perceived to be my flaws. I thought people were paying attention to things that, as it turned out, they didn’t really care about. That became easier when I stopped viewing other people through the lens of my own condition.”

Alexander hopes to create a support centre for people with cerebral palsy in Moscow one day. Perhaps it might look like the one that literally got him back on his feet as a child. “It isn’t just the kids with the condition who need help, but their parents too. Now I’m older, I realise how difficult it was for my mother, and what a struggle it was for my father who supported us through the 1990s,” he says. “Parents of children with cerebral palsy should remember that sooner or letter, no matter how severe the case, their child will have to face the world alone. They need to prepare themselves for that too.”