Leonid Stadnik tends to stick out in a crowd – which can be a little aggravating.
More than 8 feet tall, the 36-year-old draws unwanted attention from those outside his native, rural village of Podolyantsi, in Ukraine. It’s more than just impolite stares, though. When you’re purportedly the tallest living man in the world, journalists show up unannounced at your front door every now and then, hoping for a profile piece; politicians want to pose next to you; and the Guinness Book of World Records is always hoping to get in touch.
He’s not terribly interested in claiming his title, and really doesn’t keep track of his height. “Big is big,” he tells his friends. The last time he was measured, close to four years ago, he was 2.53 meters tall, or about 8 feet 4 inches.
Low-key as he is, he still gets mail from around the world. He answers as often as he can, but, working on the family farm, responses sometimes have to wait until after the fall harvest.
Though he doesn’t seek out the international spotlight, the discovery of a potentially life-threatening tumor in 2006 brought an increase in attention. It also put him in touch with a San Clemente doctor who’s working to make his life easier, and has become a close personal friend.
In effect, Dr. Jim Sperber has gotten to know the man behind the giant.
Acro-what?
“It’s really a geographical crapshoot,” Sperber says of gigantism, which Stadnik suffers from. These days, you see most giants in third world nations with less advanced medical care, where they’re ailments often go undiagnosed or untreated for years. Cases of acromegaly, where a tumor in the pituitary gland floods the body with growth hormone, are rare but not unheard of in the United States – Sperber saw two such patients in the past five years.
“One lady I had, her feet went up two or three sizes, and she couldn’t get her rings on,” he said. “She had a tumor, it was taken out, and now she’s fine.”
Acromegaly usually occurs in middle age after growth plates have fused, and literally means “enlarged hands and feet,” it’s most common symptom. But if it occurs before puberty, a person’s bones will grow as well, causing gigantic size.
A growing boy
When a patient showed Sperber a news story about a Ukrainian named Leonid Stadnik, it had the tragic hallmarks of untreated acromegaly. Born to parents who were 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet tall, Stadnik was “the runt of his class until age 10,” Sperber said. Suddenly, he started growing rapidly, becoming 5 feet 5 inches or 5 feet 6 inches by age 12. He developed hydrocephalus, where fluids flood the brain and actually begin to engorge the skull; doctors placed a shunt in his head to divert the fluid, but Stadnik and his family suspected something was wrong.
“They told my mother they did not know why I had hydrocephalus, but that the shunt would help matters,” Stadnik said. “Probably it would have been best to see the doctors again, but (the surgery) was so unpleasant that we just stayed away, since I seemed to be doing well in terms of health and school.”
A bright student, he graduated as valedictorian of his school and became a veterinarian. At 6 feet 8 inches, he realized there was a problem, but he continued to work – and grow – until he hit 8 feet tall. Until then, he had ridden a bike from his family’s 5 acre farm to an animal hospital; when he outgrew it, he used a horse-drawn cart, but winter frostbite wore him down.
Eventually, he gave it up, and turned his attention strictly to running the farm.
In 2004, a medical checkup confirmed Stadnik had a tumor in his pituitary gland, and it was too risky to have surgery. He feared he didn’t have long to live.
Message in a bottle
After reading about Stadnik, Sperber felt a connection to the man in the story, having survived a malignant tumor himself. It was removed from his right leg, leaving him alive, albeit with a slight limp.
“I’m acutely aware that there are people who are alive because they got good medical care,” Sperber said. “I wouldn’t be alive if I had been (Leonid’s) neighbor; they wouldn’t be able to treat me in the Ukraine.”
He felt bad, but what could he do?
As he walked through DeNault’s Hardware in San Juan Capistrano, he passed the gardening section, and a light bulb went off. The news story said Stadnik’s hobby was horticulture, something they shared in common. Sperber bought some exotic seeds – pumpkin, watermelon, and two packs of sunflower – and decided to mail them off with a letter.
He didn’t share that he was a doctor, but simply wrote as someone moved by Stadnik’s story and a fellow horticulturist. But there were a couple of problems: Sperber couldn’t write in Ukrainian, didn’t have an address, and though he didn’t know it, “Leonid Stadnik” is a fairly common name in that country.
He decided to give it a shot anyway. He wrote in both English and German, hoping it would improve the chances of being translated, and put Stadnik’s ubiquitous name, village, and province on the envelope. He also included a few international reply coupons, which can be exchanged in 200 countries in lieu of paid postage. Maybe he’ll want to write back, Sperber thought.
He mailed it off to the Ukraine, never expecting to see a response.
Tomorrow, Part II: Sperber finds a way to communicate and learns there may be a way to save his pen pal’s life.
Contact the writer: agood@ocregister.com, or 949-492-5128
