Thien Nhan's Mum Is Honored as an Outstanding Citizen

This October, the city of Hanoi will celebrate its 1,000th anniversary. To mark this event, 10 Hanoians have been selected as "Outstanding Hanoi Citizens" -- and one of them is Thien Nhan's devoted mum, Tran Mai Anh.

At just 37 years old, Mai Anh is the youngest in the group. Most of the others are senior citizens and include three historians and researchers; a sports coach; the artist who organized the Hanoi Wall project; a community health worker; a war veteran who's heavily involved in his community; a company director; and a farmer who has helped to improve living conditions in his community.

"I am very touched," said Mai Anh. "I hope that this award will help more people to understand about Thien Nhan and other needy kids, and to help them to overcome their challenges in life."

[Photo shows Tran Mai Anh and her eldest son, Big Minh. Since Thien Nhan was adopted two years ago, Big Minh has been a wonderful source of help for Thien Nhan. He deserves an award too for being an "Outstanding Big Brother".]

Mom's Night Out

Usually, in answer to the question, "Where's your mom?" Thien Nhan says, "She's at work, getting money to buy me food!" -- an answer he came up with all by himself. But last night when a friend of his mom's phoned and asked if Mai Anh was at work Thien Nhan said: "No! My mom is out having fun!"

"He knows everything," says Mai Anh. "He's like a little policeman."

No scam

We received an email from Bruce Travis, accusing us of running a scam. Read on to learn Bruce's concerns and our reply:

From: Bruce Travis [XXXX@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2008 10:50 AM
To: thien
Subject: Re: Disabled Baby Charity

Who are you trying to kid?You should get real. This is not how people go about raising funds for injured children. And there is no surgical procedure on the planet that costs $150'000 in Viet Nam. I suspect that you people are scam artists.

OUR REPLY:
From: elkeray@yahoo.com
To: xxxx@gmail.com, thien , MaiAnh Tran ,
Subject: helping thien nhan

Dear Bruce,

While there are many scams out there, this isn’t one of them. If you read through our blog at http://help-thien-nhan.blogspot.com/ you’ll discover the extent of this child’s injuries. His story was covered extensively by the local and foreign press. See a recent AFP story here: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/080411/world/vietnam_society_child_people

Our fundraising target of $150,000 is an estimate at best. A hospital in Thailand has quoted $5,000 (excluding doctor fees, which the surgeons have offered to waive) for the dilation of his urethra. We are now waiting to hear back from a hospital in Boston, which has expertise in this field. But the urethral dilation is just the first, simple step to recovery. So far, no doctors have been willing to even guess at the cost of rebuilding a sensate, functional penis. We have based our fundraising goal on the cost of sex change surgery (female to male). Thien Nhan’s case is obviously more complicated than these procedures.

Given that phallic reconstruction remains groundbreaking, our goal of $150,000 seems conservative. As for doing it in Vietnam, there's no way. While American researchers have grown rabbit penis cells, according to this 2006 article -- http://www.webmd.com/news/20060523/lab-grown-replacement-penis-in-future -- trials in humans remain “a long way off”. And the world’s first (and only) penis transplant took place in 2006; see http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/sep/18/medicineandhealth.china

If you, or anyone you know, has any expertise in genital reconstruction, hormone replacement or prosthetics, we’d love your input.

Thanks,

Elka Ray & Tran Mai Anh