June 10th, 2012: SCREENING DAY

          After over three days of traveling, we started our international surgical mission yesterday in northern Vietnam! Our mission is based in Nghe An, a large province famously known as the birth place of communist leader Ho Chi Minh. Yesterday was our first day of screening at the Nghe An 115 General Hospital. As we walked into the hospital, we saw hundreds of people staring at us with faces of anxiety, desperation, and hope. After traveling very long distances and waiting for our team to reach the hospital, these nervous families were very eager for screening to begin so that they could hear whether or not their children would receive surgery. After successfully screening 115 of these children, 65 patients were accepted for surgery. However, more patients will be arriving at the hospital later in the week to be screened.

            Many patients touched our hearts yesterday with their stories. One in particular was one-year-old Sinh Nguyen, an adorable boy we found wrapped in a floral bandana, happily bobbing on his grandmother’s lap outside of the hospital. Sinh has a severe bilateral cleft lip and palate.

Sinh lives with his parents and his five-year-old sister in the village of Nghia Dan. Sinh’s father is a construction worker and his mother is a farmer. Together, they barely make a living to support their family of four.

Operation Smile repaired Sinh’s mother’s unilateral cleft lip in this hospital when she was 6 years old. Before her surgery, she always felt downcast and ostracized because her deformity made her look different from everyone else. Sinh’s mother is able to sympathize with Sinh in a special way because she herself was forced to undergo the pain and hopelessness that results from dealing with a cleft. She said, “I hope my son can get the surgery he needs so he can live a normal life. In the future, I want Sinh to be able to go to school and get a stable job.” She emphasized that she didn’t want Sinh to be forced to experience the life of humiliation and shame she had before her cleft was repaired.

Sinh’s parents were turned away from doctors twice before because Sinh was too young to receive the procedure and his parents were not able to afford the necessary surgery for his facial deformities. When an Operation Smile representative visited their neighborhood and announced that a surgical mission would be held at Nghe An 115 General Hospital, Sinh’s family felt that they needed to try a third time to give Sinh the chance to a normal life.

            Arriving at the hospital full of hope, Sinh’s family waited for their turn. When Sinh and his mother started the screening process, Sinh’s mother adorned her scarred face with her excited smile. Unfortunately, our team discovered that Sinh had a lung infection that made it too risky for him to receive the cleft surgery. After receiving the devastating news, Sinh’s family was told that they should try to come back to be screened again at Operation Smile’s next mission in Nghe An. Shocked, Sinh’s mother went from station to station in screening, begging the doctors to repair her son’s cleft. Our team tried to comfort Sinh’s family and explain that Sinh needed to get better before receiving the surgery. Our doctors also taught Sinh’s mother how to treat the lung infection so that Sinh could receive the surgery during the next Operation Smile mission. We watched with tears in our eyes as Sinh, his grandparents, and his mother squeezed together on the back of the motorcycle as they left for home. In the future, we hope that Operation Smile will have enough funds and resources to provide Sinh with the surgery he needs to be a normal child.

Sinh plays with his grandmother outside of the hospital before entering the screening process. (Diana Amini)

Sinh Nguyen, a one-year-old with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, waits with his grandmother to hear the results from screening (Arielle Sasson)