Over the last 30 years of working as a surgeon at the HCM City Oncology Hospital, Level-2 Specialist Dr Nguyen Van Tien can’t remember how many patients he’s operated on. On average, he performs about 20 surgeries a week, with many cases lasting 4-6 hours.

Dr Tien is also known as a generous philanthropist. For patients too poor to pay initial hospital fees, he readily dips into his own pocket and mobilizes relatives and friends to help.

Saving poor patients on brink of death

Most recently, he operated on a patient with a massive ovarian tumor alongside severe underlying conditions.

The female patient, born in 1993, from An Giang, had an ovarian tumor. She visited a provincial hospital and was referred to a higher-level facility but went home due to lack of money. The tumor grew larger, pressing on her abdomen, causing excruciating pain and exhaustion.

“Every night, I lay on the bed with my drum-like belly, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. When the pain became unbearable, I closed my eyes and let my family members and neighbors carry me wherever they could, even to a graveyard,” the young woman recalled.

Seeing her dire condition, agonizing pain, and near-death state, her family borrowed a small sum of money to carry her to the HCM City Oncology Hospital.

According to Tien, the patient was hospitalized emaciated and pale with a giant tumor. She was advised to undergo surgery, but her husband broke down in tears as the family had no money. Though she had health insurance, other costs amounted to VND20-30 million. Dr Tien and his colleagues decided to seek donations from benefactors to cover her hospital fees.

“As usual, I talked about the case to my wife, and she rallied her friends to help. After just a few days, we raised over VND20 million, enough to support the patient,” Tien said.

The patient’s condition was very poor. Many scheduled surgeries were canceled because she wasn’t strong enough for major surgery. On February 28, after multiple last-minute delays, the doctors decided to operate. 

“If it weren’t for this hospital, I’d have died days ago,” the patient said.

Tien described the surgery as a battle with death. After hours, the surgeons removed a tumor weighing over 15 kilograms from her abdomen without damaging other organs.

Giving to patients to help them start anew

L.T.D, from Bac Lieu, arrived with a 50 kilogram tumor. She had lived with it since childhood, but her family’s poverty kept her away from treatment, letting the tumor grow massively over 19 years. At the age of 20, she had the frame of a 10-year-old girl and was nicknamed “the frog girl.”

Upon admission, D.’s condition was critical, with doctors predicting she had about 15 days left, while surgery risked death, but Tien still chose to operate, because it was her only hope.

He devised a plan to drain 2-3 liters of fluid daily for 10 consecutive days. During surgery, another 20 liters were removed, totaling 50 liters. After the surgery, she recovered miraculously—her legs stopped swelling and her abdomen shrank.

To cover D.’s treatment expenses, Tien and his wife called on friends and acquaintances for help. On her discharge day, he even gave her a small sum to start a business. To her, Dr Tien was her second birth giver.

Besides these two cases, Dr Tien has often pleaded with patients to stay for surgery, promising to find money if they lacked it.

“If I don’t operate, patients will turn to herbal medicine or follow unguided diets, which are even more dangerous. So I end up ‘begging’ everywhere to help them,” the doctor said.

In fact, these kind of patients without money or health insurance can be found at many hospitals. Patients are only hospitalized when their conditions become very bad. And the principle that all doctors pursue is ‘treating patients first, receiving fees later’. If they wait until patients pay the fees, they may miss a golden opportunity to save them.

Vo Thu