The dream of long hair of a 2nd grade girl

Someone told Mr. Hai, if you like it, buy a wig. He knew but could not do it because there were many other things to spend. “You can’t live without hair, but you can’t go to the hospital without money,” he explained.

Mr. Nguyen Van Hai, 40 years old, in Yen Thi village, Long Phieng commune, Yen Chau district works as a builder, earning more than 300,000 VND every day. Ms. Thuc, 27 years old, his wife goes out every day to remove manure and weeds for people around the village. Four years ago, he borrowed 40 million VND to buy formwork, construction equipment, and set up a startup team. Working hard, they believe they can pay their debts and raise their three children to grow up well. But the debt has not been paid off, the fever of the eldest daughter has turned everything upside down.

“I touched her all over, and there were lymph nodes everywhere. She complained of pain in her arms, legs, and sometimes fever,” Ms. Thuc said. At the beginning of 2019, she sent her youngest child just born to her grandmother, the couple took Kim Anh to district and provincial hospitals and then to the National Children’s Hospital. Day in Hanoi. The doctor called Hai privately into the room. Heaven and earth collapsed when he learned that his son had blood cancer, but worried about his wife falling ill, he hid her.

Two months later, by chance reading the drug bill, the mother of Thai ethnicity knew what kind of disease Kim Anh had. “I just knew that at that time, my legs were not stable,” she describes simply. Both paternal and maternal grandmothers are over 70. Unable to send children forever, she had to leave her husband behind while she took care of her two young children.

Kim Anh does not know its disease. Seeing that her friends in the same hospital room were also bald like her, she had no one to compare with. When I got a needle to take marrow for testing, it hurt, I cried without a sound. Every time the chemotherapy is given, the baby vomits. The builder father could only use his rough hand and pat his son on the back.

Every time the pain comes, Kim Anh often looks up with dull eyes and asks: “When will I be cured so I don’t have to go to the hospital anymore, Dad?” Mr. Hai said it was the hardest question in the world, knowing the answer but couldn’t answer it.

Kim Anh went to the hospital to enjoy 100% insurance, but the money for meals, living expenses, and medical expenses in addition to insurance during the days of treatment made the couple’s debt thicker and thicker. Poor and not used to sitting idle, he took care of his children while trying to find a hired job. But with the outbreak of Covid, it was not easy for him to get in and out of the hospital, let alone find a job.

“For the first six months, relatives helped, but now we have to borrow money, causing debt to pile up,” he said.

To have a little extra income, every time his daughter comes home, besides working as a worker during the day, Mr. Hai works as a porter at night. The shift from 8 am to midnight is about a few hundred thousand dong. Thuc also went online to practice selling online, besides working as a hired worker.

Mr. Nguyen Duc Manh, head of Yen Thi village, said that Mr. Hai and his wife were working hard, but because their children were sick, they were in dire straits. “For the past few years, whenever there is a support wave in the locality, we always pay attention to his family first. But because of the local economic conditions, most organizations only give spiritual encouragement, visit, help is only a few hundred thousand, “Mr. Manh said. From 2021, Mr. Hai’s family is one of 21 poor households in the village.

Also because they are busy making a living, Thuc and her husband do not have time to teach Kim Anh to study. At the hospital, she attends a love class once a week. Every time the hospital treatment ended, Kim Anh asked her father to take her to class.

After going for two days, the girl came home and cried with her parents: “You all know how to read. But I can’t read”, then stayed at home. Kim Anh is in second grade this year, but she’s just learning the alphabet. “When I get better, my hair grows long, I can go to school with you,” Kim Anh told her parents, as if to comfort herself.

Pham Nga