Cuong's last days

We received a call from one our friends to help a young boy who had a large tumor on his face. HSCV traveled to Hai Duong district to visit this boy. His name is Vuong Quoc Cuong and he is 5 years old. Cuong has had this tumor on his face since he is 3 years old. His family sent him to various hospitals many times to try and help him. However, the hospitals could not help. The tumor on his face got bigger day-by-day and he was in pain. He could not sleep or eat. Sadly, there was no way to save Cuong because the tumor was at the final stage.

With the hope of helping to lessen the pain for Cuong during his last days in this world, HSCV invited a doctor from the Cancer hospital to visit his home and give him the best treatment. The doctor was very nice and showed the family how to take care of Cuong and then gave them some medicine to lessen the pain for free. This medicine helped Cuong sleep better and made him feel more comfortable. Some days later, with the help from the Abbott Milk company, HSCV traveled to Hai Duong to visit Cuong and gave him 22 cans of PediaSure BA milk. Cuong really liked this kind of milk and drank all of it. We did our best to help Cuong, however, on May 30, 2009, Cuong passed away gently surrounded by the love of his family and all of us.

To pay for Cuong’s treatment the family had to sell their land. They are still in debt and owe a large amount of money. This debt is a burden for the family. Both parents are farmers and they go to work on other farms for hire, sometimes for very little money. However, for the last two years, they were not able to go to work for hire and had to spend a lot of money everyday because of Cuong’s condition. They have two daughters named Thuy and Chung. They are studying at schools and this also is a big challenge for the parents to pay school fees for these two children.

HSCV is designing programs to help families like Cuong’s to assist them overcome the hardship of debt. We will consider helping Thuy and Chung with a scholarship program for the coming school year. Both of them need to travel quite far to school and we also want to help them get to school by providing the both of them with bicycles. Doing this would help them not be late getting to school, and to return home early so they can help their parents with chores around the house.

In the sprit of teaching a man to fish so, he can eat for a lifetime we are considering donating some pigs, chickens and a cultivator. This would help them will have more income and provide food for them as well.

Blogged by Nguen Thi Minh Chau

* This story was written on June 4th. Since then HSCV has learned that the family has received an outpouring of support from the community. We are happy to announce that the family now has enough money to pay off all of their debts, purchase the items mentioned above, and keep their children in school (the money was not donated to HSCV, but directly to the family). We wish we could have done more of Cuong while he was with us, but we thankful some of the family’s burdens have been relived. HSCV sincerely thanks all of those who have sent donations to the family.