A
beautiful thirteen-year-old girl slowly walked around the pre-op ward this morning,
sharing her shy, crooked smile with the patients around her. A multicolored
dragonfly was printed on her soft pink outfit, a pink that matched the pureness
of her personality. Throughout the day, she was constantly seen attaching
herself to various members of our team, holding their hands tightly and
communicating her appreciation for their work through her sweet smile. When the
team members were busy, the girl would enthusiastically play with the jump rope
our high school students brought for her, occupying herself for hours until it
was her turn for surgery.
Hien
Thi Nguyen’s relatives were downcast when Hien was born with a severe cleft
palate. Her parents felt that Hien was born with the deformity because her
maternal grandfather handled Agent Orange, a disabling defoliant, during the
Vietnam War, and the poison affected the formation of Hien’s palate.
Although Operation Smile operated
on Hien three times before, Hien still had the cleft and her deformity
prevented her from speaking and interacting with others normally. After hearing
that Operation Smile was coming to Nghe An, Hien’s parents hoped that their
daughter would finally receive the surgery she needed to live a normal life.
Hien and her mother traveled for three hours by motorcycle from their family’s
rice farm to get to the hospital for screening. Fortunately, Hien was accepted
for surgery, her last one necessary to fully repair her cleft palate.
Hien’s
mother, Ha Thi, was extremely afraid when Hien was taken in for surgery,
anxious to see her daughter’s palate. Ha Thi completely relaxed when she saw
that the anesthesiologist tenderly carried Hien out of the operating room,
“treating her like a caring mother,” Ha Thi noted.
While she sat on her hospital bed a
little bit later, Hien tried to get a good look of her repaired palate in the
mirror. As she opened her mouth and tilted her head back to look at the roof of
her mouth, she gasped when she noticed the hole in her palate was gone. Shyly
smiling, she whispered, “I finally am beautiful.”
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| Hien and her mother, Ha Thi, share smiles in the child life playroom before surgery. (Arielle Sasson) |
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| Hien shows off a batch of stickers she received from the Swedish volunteers. (Diana Amini) |
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