TUAN - A HAPPY ENDING ADOPTION
28/09/2011
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"Tuan
After years of waiting, last February 2011 we finally travelled to Vietnam to meet and adopt our son Tuan.
We met Tuan in an Institute a few hours North of Hanoi, in a foggy day on February 25th. Tuan was the cutest boy: two big eyes hidden by an orange blanket.
He was just perfect, as perfect was the Institute and nice were all the functionaries.
And perfect have been our first weeks in Hanoi, waiting for the adoption to be officially registered.
Hanoi is a beautiful city, rich of history and colonial charm, but what makes it more charming is the activity and kindness of its people.
Our perfect world came suddenly to an end on March 11th, when Tuan’s breath suddenly became strange and twisted.
We lived in a picturesque neighbourhood on Tay Ho lake, just in front of an International Clinic, and dad insisted to have Tuan checked by doctors… they immediately recognized a serious problem and a few minutes later the three of us were in an ambulance, running for the French Hospital and then again for the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit of the Vietnamese Pediatric Hospital Ben Vien Nhi.
Diagnosis was clear and harsh: severe viral pneumonia, degenerated in Acute Respiratory Desease Syndrome; in just a few hours both lungs were washed out and Tuan was intubated in need of mechanical ventilation; a few days later the chances of survival become inconsistent for a baby boy that weighted only 3 kilograms.
PICU’s doctors and nurses have been extremely professional and reactive, with international skills and western\Japanese technologies; their support to us during the long hospitalization went beyond medical assistance, and most of all they have been very sensitive to persist with Tuan’s medication even when recovery seemed far.
Although language difficulties, PICU’s staff and other patients’s relatives have been our family abroad for weeks, offering blankets and places to rest, dining with us and sharing fears and hope.
In a few weeks, Tuan was fully recovered and dismissed.
We remained in Hanoi a bit longer, before boarding the long intercontinental flight; back to our Vietnamese life as visitors, back to our house on the lake and back to eating Bun Cha and fried bananas.
Tuan was born a second time thanks to PICU’s doctors.
We will always be thankful and we would like everyone to know about the great job they constantly do, saving children in very serious medical conditions.
Now Tuan is playing here in our garden in Milan; he crawls and almost stands up alone. He is ready to travel again, hand by hand with mom and dad, hoping to be back soon to the magical Vietnam that we will never forget."
Tuan's parents