At 8:00 a.m. on April 17, a flight departed from Shigatse Airport, arriving in Chengdu before connecting to Shanghai. On the plane, Tashi Dorjee, a 13-year-old Tibetan boy, was a little nervous, clutching his father's hand when the air flow was bumpy on the fly. Like them, 15-year-old Dorji Quza and his mother Biancang were also flying for the first time, leaving Shigatse for the first time.
Le Fei, a cadre of Shanghai aid to Tibet, was the guide of this group, and after patiently soothing the emotions of children and parents for a while, he began to carefully plan the itinerary after arriving in Shanghai in a notebook. They did not come to Shanghai for tourism, but to operate on their children. Dorjee Quza suffers from ear canal atresia with severe hearing impairment, and Tashi Dorjee suffers from a huge corneal dermatoid tumor in his eyes. In front of these people is a journey with an uncertain future.
A child who has been kissed by an angel
Le Fei, a surgeon at Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, went to Xigaze People's Hospital as the ninth batch of Cadres in Shanghai in July 2019 as vice president and deputy leader of the Shanghai Tibet Aid Medical Team.
Le Fei (second from right) at the Shigatse City Special Education School.
Le Fei remembers seeing the two children for the first time at the Shigatse City Special Education School. The school specializes in receiving students who are unable to attend school normally because they are visually impaired and hearing impaired, and teachers call them "children who have been kissed by angels."
It takes 12 hours by car from downtown Shigatse to reach Tashi Dorji's hometown of Saga. The average altitude of the county is more than 4600 meters, the climate is cold and harsh, the oxygen is dry, and the local environment is very harsh. Tashi's father, Kelsang Phuntsok, is a herdsman who costs at least 150,000 yuan to operate on his child's eyes, which is far beyond the family's reach.
"Tashi Dorjee is a very shy boy who basically doesn't speak." Le Fei said that the child's introverted personality is due to physical defects. Giant corneal dermoid tumor is a worldwide rare disease with tumors that grow on the eyes. As a surgeon, Le Fei usually came into contact with various patients, but he felt very sad when he saw the child.
"Tashi's right eye does not have a normal pupil structure, but a mass that protrudes out of the orbit, causing his eyes to have no vision at all, not even a sense of light, and cannot be closed." This rare disease has only two or three cases reported in the literature worldwide, and none of them have preserved their eyeballs after surgery.
Compared with the introverted Tashi, 15-year-old Dorji Quza is a bit more cheerful. Quza's left ear is congenitally atresia, no external pinna, no ear canal, only a little bit of meat.
On the way to Shanghai, you need to wear a mask when you take a plane, a car, and enter various places. "For us normal people, wearing a mask is a very simple thing. But Quza has only one ear, and the other side of the mask strap can only be tied to a small piece of meat. I felt pain when I looked at it, but the child was like it was all right. Le Fei said.
The doctor examines Quza's ears.
The situation of the two children was registered on the "Five Golden Flowers" platform established by the Shanghai Municipal "Group-style" Medical Aid Task Force for Tibet. In October last year, the Shanghai Municipal Commission for Discipline Inspection led a team to visit teachers and students at the Xigaze Special Education School to coordinate the two children's treatment in Shanghai, and then with the joint efforts of the Shanghai Tibet Aid Liaison Group, the Shanghai Ninth People's Hospital and the Shanghai Charity Foundation Love Window, 9,234 youth league members of the Shanghai Construction Engineering Group raised 350,000 yuan for the two students. The child finally got the opportunity to come to Shanghai for treatment.
On the evening of April 17, when the flight landed at Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, the caring people and volunteers involved in the project had already waited early to pick up at the airport exit, and arranged for them to prepare for admission to the hospital such as accommodation and nucleic acid testing.
The eve of the light
In Shigatse, Tashi Dorjee underwent many examinations, and all the doctors gave was to remove the eyeball.
"Tashi's left eye is normal, but due to the presence of a tumor in the right eye, it is easy to cause two eyeballs to be infected at the same time, which is a characteristic of eye diseases." Le Fei said that before his child came to Shanghai for medical treatment, he and Experts in Shanghai communicated remotely, and they all thought it was difficult to keep his right eyeball. "If you take off your right eye, you can at least save a good eye."
What worries Le Fei even more is that the eye deformities brought about by the removal of the eyeballs will make it difficult for children to integrate into normal people's lives in the future. "Because even if the prosthetic eye is installed, it can be seen from the appearance, after all, there is no material that can replace the real eye."
On April 19, the child was admitted to the Ninth People's Hospital for preoperative examination, and Fu Yao, director of the Ophthalmology Department of the Ninth People's Hospital of the City, carefully examined Tashi's situation and said: "Maybe you can try to clear the tumor without removing the eyeball." ”
It was the first time in 13 years that Tashi and his father saw hope.
Tashi is doing a preoperative examination.
At 9:45 a.m. the next day, Fu Yao performed eye surgery on Tashi Dorjee. The operation was very successful, the mass was removed, the eye structure was not damaged, not only the eyeball was preserved, but there was hope of restoring part of the vision.
After the surgery, Tashi said his biggest feeling was that "his eyes can finally be closed." On 23 April, he was discharged from the hospital and returned to Shigatse to recuperate, and according to the treatment plan, he needed to undergo another supplementary operation two weeks later. On May 5, when Tashi returned to Shanghai for follow-up consultation, the doctor found that the child was recovering well after the operation, and the right eyeball had begun to regain its sense of light. "You don't have to do any more surgery." Tashi's attending physician said.
That afternoon, Le Fei learned of the good news and went to the ward to see Tashi. "You boy is quite angry, and he escaped another operation." Unexpectedly, Tashi, who had always been silent, laughed at him a few times. Le Fei immediately picked up his mobile phone and took this picture. "That was the first time I saw him smile from the heart, it was a clear and pure smile."
"He said it hurts just really hurts."
During the month of treatment, Dorjiquza did not return home, requiring 12 days of observation after surgery and 2 weeks of hospitalization after stitch removal.
"Quza's left ear is congenital atresia, and the most direct surgical method is to implant a hearing aid in his left ear to restore its function, but then the child will still look like he will not have ears in the future." In order to help Quza restore hearing in his left ear and improve the appearance of his ear at the same time, Zhang Zhihua, director of the Ninth Municipal Hospital, designed two stages of surgery: "Phase I surgery, reshaping an artificial pinna; Phase II surgery, making the pinna stand up and implanting a hearing aid to 'reshape' one ear for the child." ”
"Do" an ear out of thin air, the difficulty can be imagined. The operation, which began at 8 a.m. on April 20, lasted nearly 12 hours before it was successfully completed.
The pain of reshaping the ear to remove the cartilage from the end of the child's own ribs is unforgettable. However, when Le Fei went to see the child the day after the operation, the child only said lightly: "The chest hurts a little." The translator teacher who had been with him said: "Quza is a very tough child, he cried out in pain, that is really painful..."
After the operation, Zhang Zhihua did not really put his mind at ease. "People living in plateaus have a characteristic, red blood cells are very high, resulting in high blood viscosity, we are very worried that the 'artificial ear' will necrosis due to insufficient blood supply." In the postoperative recovery stage, the doctors and nurses carefully observed Quza's situation every day, and finally breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the child's condition gradually stabilizing.
On the day of discharge, the families of the two children thanked the doctors for presenting Hada. After living in Shigatse for two years, Le Fei knew that according to local customs, the offering of Hada to people with great respect was to be given to his hands. "When I saw the father of the child thank the medical staff with the most simple ethnic etiquette, I felt very touched."
On May 7, Tashi Dorjee and Dorji Quza departed from Pudong Airport and returned to Shigatse. As when they came, Le Fei has always been with them, but the difference is that the two children are much more cheerful than they were at the beginning.
【Five Golden Flowers" on the Plateau】
This is not the first time Le Fei has escorted a Tibetan child to Shanghai for treatment. Since entering Tibet on July 14, 2019, his Shanghai "group-style" medical aid team has begun to systematically sort out the spectrum of diseases that seriously threaten the health of the people of Xigaze, especially for the multiple diseases of women and children, forming a platform called "Five Golden Flowers".
"Five Golden Flowers" is a spectrum of five major types of diseases sorted out by the Tibet Aid Medical Team after screening local women and children for multiple diseases, and named after the names of five flowers unique to the plateau.
In Tibetan, "plum" means flower. The "Gesang Meadow" project mainly screens and goes to Shanghai for treatment of "children with developmental hip dysplasia (ddh)" in Shigatse City. Mothers in Shigatse city are accustomed to tying up the legs of newborns to facilitate labor, often resulting in DDH, and the incidence of girls is significantly higher. If not treated in time, it will lead to degenerative diseases of the hip joint, and the disability rate is high. So far, the medical team has screened 10 batches of 105 children with DDH to Shanghai for surgical treatment, and funded more than 5 million yuan in medical expenses.
The "Bang Jin Mei Duo" project mainly screens and goes to Shanghai for congenital diseases of children's head and face in Shigatse City, such as congenital deafness, congenital atresia or deformity of the ear canal, congenital cleft lip and palate, etc. Cephaloma and facial deformities will not only seriously damage the health of children in terms of physiological functions, but also seriously damage their mental health and damage their social adaptability if they are not treated in time as they enter the collective living environment in the future.
Last year, the medical team joined forces with the Municipal Charity Foundation to help two children with congenital heart disease come to Shanghai for medical treatment, both from the "Dolma Meadow" project in the "Five Golden Flowers" - for the treatment of congenital heart disease in Xigaze City. In the plateau area, the incidence of congenital heart is 10 times higher than that in the plain area, and if the congenital heart disease such as ventricular septal defect, atrial septal defect, and patent ductus arteriosus is not treated in time, it will seriously affect the child's heart pump function and cause systemic hypoxia. Since the first child to receive funding from this project is named Danzen Dolma, the Congenital Heart Disease Project is named after it. So far, the project has completed the treatment of 12 cases of children, and more than 800,000 yuan of medical expenses have been reduced through charitable funding.
"Qu Ru Mei Duo" screened for chest wall deformity diseases in children in Xigaze City, and performed surgical treatment at the Xigaze City People's Hospital. Due to dietary factors and living habits, the probability of chicken breasts and funnel breasts in children in Xigaze is significantly higher than that in the plain area. If not treated in time, chest wall deformities will further affect the patient's cardiopulmonary function, labor ability, and shorten the patient's life expectancy in severe cases. In 2019, under the leadership of the fifth batch of Tibet aid experts, the Xigaze People's Hospital has the ability to carry out rescue and treatment operations locally. "Qu ru mei duo" is a coral flower unique to Tibet. The "Qu Ru Mei Duo" action is to help children with chest deformities to regain their full chest like coral flowers.
Among the "Five Golden Flowers" is also a project for women, "Gonra Meadow". "Gonlamedo", which means snow lotus in Tibetan, is a project that treats breast and cervical cancers in women in Shigatse. At present, the Tibet Autonomous Region has implemented a region-wide "two cancers" screening program, but the corresponding surgical treatment and follow-up adjuvant treatment will bring a heavy economic burden to the patient's family. In order to avoid the situation that the patient's family abandons the treatment for him, the first phase of the "Gonla Meadow" operation has raised 500,000 yuan to help poor women who unfortunately suffer from "two cancers" to bloom again like snow lotuses.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Zhou Nan Text Editor: Huang Jianjian
Source: Author: Huang Jianjian