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This recent story in the news really touched my heart. 😍 The wonders of plastic surgery...
A Vietnamese baby girl was mutilated by a machete and left for dead when her father had suspicions that she may not have been his. The little girl is in good hands now. She was adopted by a Canadian couple who named her Fleur-Ange because she is her daddy's flower and her mom's angel.
" Godin says she'll never forget the day Fleur-Ange came home. The baby's tiny arms reached up for Godin, who swept the girl to her chest and burst into tears. "It's as if the baby knew that finally, she has a mama," she said.
But when the baby first arrived, she would bang her head and rock herself in bed - signs of institutional neglect. Godin and Godfrey took turns holding her day and night for a month.
She'd stopped eating in Vietnam after a sudden separation from her caregiver; the orphanage had put the baby in the handicapped section. "I force-fed her milk with a syringe," Godin said of the first week. "I said to myself, 'you didn't come all this way to die, mon Ange.' "
The lateral muscles in her tiny face had been severed down to the bone. She can see out of one eye only. Scar tissue has twisted a corner of mouth open and flattened her skull.
🙁
Denis Nigro, a San Diego, Calif., plastic surgeon whose clinic provides free treatment for children with special needs has been performing plastic surgery for 28 years, says he has never seen such devastating injuries to a baby as those to Fleur-Ange.
"It's a miracle she survived," Nigro said. "She could have died of brain injury and infection. Newborn babies don't have immunity to fight infections. They are basically defenceless."
An operation earlier in Vietnam left the damaged eye wide open, dry and prone to infection.
Nigro's first surgery on Fleur-Ange - at 18 months old - was to release the tension caused by massive scar tissue. It was stopping bone growth underneath.
The baby had grown three inches and gained 10 pounds since her arrival in Quebec. But scar tissue doesn't grow, Godfrey explained, and was "tearing at the corner of her mouth, making it split and bleed."
That procedure realigned her nose and mouth. Two subsequent skin grafts to the cheek failed, but the third succeeded.
The family spent two months in San Diego last summer, living in a borrowed motorhome while Fleur-Ange had a tissue-expander put in her neck. Twice a week, she got painful injections to make the expander balloon so the newly created skin could be pulled up like a mini-facelift to minimize scar tracks.
"
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazet...1491d-f3a9-4590-b9ee-d62129c45d86&k=40450&p=2
A Vietnamese baby girl was mutilated by a machete and left for dead when her father had suspicions that she may not have been his. The little girl is in good hands now. She was adopted by a Canadian couple who named her Fleur-Ange because she is her daddy's flower and her mom's angel.
" Godin says she'll never forget the day Fleur-Ange came home. The baby's tiny arms reached up for Godin, who swept the girl to her chest and burst into tears. "It's as if the baby knew that finally, she has a mama," she said.
But when the baby first arrived, she would bang her head and rock herself in bed - signs of institutional neglect. Godin and Godfrey took turns holding her day and night for a month.
She'd stopped eating in Vietnam after a sudden separation from her caregiver; the orphanage had put the baby in the handicapped section. "I force-fed her milk with a syringe," Godin said of the first week. "I said to myself, 'you didn't come all this way to die, mon Ange.' "
The lateral muscles in her tiny face had been severed down to the bone. She can see out of one eye only. Scar tissue has twisted a corner of mouth open and flattened her skull.
🙁
Denis Nigro, a San Diego, Calif., plastic surgeon whose clinic provides free treatment for children with special needs has been performing plastic surgery for 28 years, says he has never seen such devastating injuries to a baby as those to Fleur-Ange.
"It's a miracle she survived," Nigro said. "She could have died of brain injury and infection. Newborn babies don't have immunity to fight infections. They are basically defenceless."
An operation earlier in Vietnam left the damaged eye wide open, dry and prone to infection.
Nigro's first surgery on Fleur-Ange - at 18 months old - was to release the tension caused by massive scar tissue. It was stopping bone growth underneath.
The baby had grown three inches and gained 10 pounds since her arrival in Quebec. But scar tissue doesn't grow, Godfrey explained, and was "tearing at the corner of her mouth, making it split and bleed."
That procedure realigned her nose and mouth. Two subsequent skin grafts to the cheek failed, but the third succeeded.
The family spent two months in San Diego last summer, living in a borrowed motorhome while Fleur-Ange had a tissue-expander put in her neck. Twice a week, she got painful injections to make the expander balloon so the newly created skin could be pulled up like a mini-facelift to minimize scar tracks.
"
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazet...1491d-f3a9-4590-b9ee-d62129c45d86&k=40450&p=2
