George & Mary Colagreco: We are deeply grateful to Dr. Tsepkova for her help this past week. Within 24 hours of contacting her she arranged to see our referral in Moscow. Within 48 hours we had a complete written medical report with her findings (e-mailed to us the same day she evaluated the child). Dr. Mila responded quickly to any questions that I had, getting back to me in less than 24 hours each time I had a question.
This is our second adoption so we have been through this before. With our first adoption, the Dr. gave us a medical summary that was almost identical to the medical report we received from our agency. We did not have a high level of comfort that a thorough medical assessment was done.
Dr. Tsepkova's report was much more thorough, assessing the child's physical, cognitive and behavioral development and pointing out warning signs of potential attachment issues. From the report it was clear that Dr. Tsepkova is a well trained medical professional. Having a doctor that was able to go directly to the orphanage, see the child in person and review her medical records was invaluable. When we used a US doctor to evaluate a previous referral it took 4 weeks to resolve medical questions. In this case we had complete information in 48 hours.
Among other things, Dr. Tsepkova pointed out that at 17 months our referral did not respond to her name, had recently begun alarming behaviors pointing to attachment disorder, that she had facial characteristics of FAS and that the orphanage records included reference to the fact that the mother drank during pregnancy. We would have had no way of knowing these things if she had not seen the child in person. When we turned down our referral it was helpful to have Dr. Tsepkova's written report to refer to.
Although this was a difficult experience it would have been much more difficult if we had traveled to Russia and found this information out on our first visit.
We recommend Dr. Tsepkova's services to prospective adoptive parents. International adoption can be a stressful experience. Having a doctor evaluate your child before you travel can help to minimize the stress of your first meeting with your child. We plan on using Dr. Tsepkova's services for any future referrals and are grateful that we have found a doctor we believe we can trust to give us an honest assessment.

Lis Burns: Dr. Tsepkova is knowledgeable and concerned for the well being of the children and the appropriateness of the placement with a particular family. She uses appropriate evaluative tools (Denver Developmental &/or Bayley Infant assessment scales) does thorough physical examinations and medical history review. She is honest in her assessment, and will give you information based on her observations, untainted by the requests of agencies or facilitators to describe a child in a particular light. Dr. Tsepkova is knowledgeable about international adoption and Russian institionalization and the specific needs and challenges of these children. I would not hesitate to recommend her to any family who is considering adopting from Russia.

Pam Basset: We just worked with her in the Chelyabinsk region 1.5 weeks ago. She was great--very flexible, thorough, and reasonable charges. You can email me privately for more info - PBassett@pdi-inc.com

Leslie Hand: We just used Dr. Mila's services for an assessment of a 4 year old girl, located in an orphanage 2 hours outside of St Petersburg. We chose her over other MD's mostly for 4 reasons - her consistently quick response to every question we emailed her, her incredible flexibility (our plans changed so many times) and willingness to travel so far, and her experience in Russian Medicine. It was quite a travel day for her, leaving on the overnight train from Moscow, spending the entire next day with us, and then catching another overnight train back - almost 2 whole days when you think about it. Still I felt that she was very reasonable priced and could do far more assessment during a day's trip than a 5 minute video. To be honest, I don t really know how anyone can do much of an assessment from video. Originally we had thought we would do video and send it via internet. T\Once we were there we found there really is no way a person could do that easily, as even sending a 1 minute low-grade MPEG4 video would be many many megs large and take hours to upload. Why bother when you can have a resource as great at Dr Mila actually at the orphanage with you. Plus she translated so much more than even our coordinator could keep up with, and knew just the right questions to ask the orphanage doctor - this last part being key. So for those of you considering her services, I would recommend her VERY highly. I can't even imagine making that first visit without her. You are so busy thinking with your heart, that you really need someone there to be thinking with their head! She has a very nice way about her as well and she really cares about the kids and the family, so she seems to be able to talk through issues din such a way that it doesn t have to be scary. I have found so many American doctors are so "detached" from the patient in discussing diagnosis; issues etc and forget about the roller-coaster ride that their statements can sometimes send us on. This was not so with Dr. Mila, and we really appreciated her honesty, yet gentle approach to discussing any issues.

You can also ask Laurie Mangum - westernyank@aol.com
Cris Kinsley - wkinsley@prodgy.net