From the moment she was born, three-year-old Ton Nu Hoang Dung was unfortunately born with a congenital defect: she had no nose and her eyes protruded. Because of this, Hoang Dung’s childhood was filled with sadness and loneliness. She couldn’t go to school and had no friends to play with because other children would run away in fear.

Hoang Dung’s face was completely deformed, lacking a nose, with a crooked forehead, and her eyes were wide and bulging. The distance between her eyes was also far apart, unlike that of other children.

Hong Thi Thuy Linh, her mother, said that during her pregnancy, she had a prenatal check-up, but because the fetus was in a prone position, the defect wasn’t detected. Only after Hoang Dung was born did the doctors discover her congenital defect.

Fearing that Ms. Linh and her husband would be shocked, the doctors immediately placed the baby in the intensive care unit. At the time of her birth, Hoang Dung was very weak; even the doctors didn’t dare believe this poor little girl would survive. However, with dedicated care, after two weeks, Hoang Dung was able to breastfeed. It was then that Ms. Linh and her husband were finally able to see their child’s face.

“The doctors were afraid I would be shocked, so they didn’t tell me she had a birth defect, only that she was weak and needed special care. But my maternal instinct told me something was wrong. When I received her back after two weeks, I was truly stunned, and felt even more love for her because I knew for sure that she would have to endure the hardships and sadness that her birth defect would bring,” Ms. Linh said sadly.

Despite her deformity, little Hoang Dung truly surprised us with her agility and wit. Although she couldn’t go to school, her mother taught her, and she knows how to dance and sing, always yearning to go to school.

The innocent questions of the 3-year-old child, “Mom, when can I go to school?”; “Mom, why don’t my friends play with me?”… have brought tears to the eyes of the young mother and Hoang Dung’s family countless times.

“She’s very mischievous; she loves to play with the other children, but when they see her, they get scared and run away. The children in the village don’t understand, so they call Dung ‘the devil-faced one,’ which makes us adults feel so sorry for her,” a neighbor of Hoang Dung said sadly.

Pitying their daughter’s fate, Ms. Linh and her husband have saved up and borrowed money from everywhere to take their daughter to various hospitals across the country, hoping to give Hoang Dung a normal face and bright eyes like other children.

However, treatment requires going abroad, and the cost of the surgery is up to 2 billion VND. Their difficult circumstances, with Mr. Dung’s main income depending on his aluminum and glass business, make that hope difficult to realize.

In addition, many individuals and organizations, upon learning of the child’s pitiful situation, have stepped forward to call for support. Thanks to this, a miracle began to appear for the 3-year-old girl. With help from the community, Hoang Dung’s family quickly brought her to Singapore for eye treatment.

After many days of waiting, Hoang Dung underwent surgery at Mount Elizabeth Hospital. This was the first and most crucial surgery in the journey to restore Hoang Dung’s face.

The surgery, which lasted over 11 hours, was a great success, much to the joy of the doctors and the family. Currently, both of her eyes have been brought closer together and positioned horizontally, with only her eyebrows remaining far apart.

Hoang Thi Thuy Linh, Hoang Dung’s mother, said that her daughter will have to undergo two more important surgeries to push the eye sockets further inward. Along with that, she will have to have surgery to raise her nose to restore a normal face. However, after this surgery, they will have to wait another 6 months to a year, depending on her health.

A few days after the surgery, the doctors removed the bandages from Hoang Dung’s eyelids, and they also reported that the surgical wounds were stable. Due to the good results, she was able to walk and talk, so she was discharged from the hospital for outpatient treatment to reduce costs.