A 10-year-old Vietnamese orphan will travel to Boston to receive treatment for a large facial growth after he was turned away by a Toronto hospital, his caregiver said Thursday.
Olwyn Walter of the Children's Bridge Foundation said Hoang Son Pham will begin a lengthy course of medical procedures at Children's Hospital Boston early in the new year.
Walter said her association chose the facility in Boston after reviewing proposals from several renowned centres in the United States.
She said Son was elated when she gave him the news early Thursday morning.
"It's not physically possible for him to grin from ear to ear, but really there was a huge smile ... and he gave me a high five," she said from her home in Halifax, where Son is living.
"He's definitely one very happy boy."
Son, who was given up for adoption by his parents when he was three, came to Canada last June in the hope of having the football-size growth reduced, if not removed.
Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children spent months reviewing his case, but said it wouldn't proceed because there were risks to the procedure and the growth was not considered life-threatening.
Since then, several U.S. hospitals have come forward to say they could shrink the growth.
Walter said a team of plastic surgeons plan to give the boy a series of injections — called sclerotherapy — every six to eight weeks for at least a year.
Son would return to Halifax between treatments and he could also receive some surgery when the treatments are done.
Doctors in Boston have offered their services for free and the Ray Tye Medical Aid Foundation there is donating $150,000 toward Son's medical costs, with Walter's group paying the remaining $200,000.
Doctors at the IWK Children's Hospital in Halifax have also offered to look after Son between his treatments in Boston.
The Boston hospital's John Mulliken, a plastic surgeon with a specialty in vascular anomalies, reviewed the case last month and said he was confident he can shrink the growth.
"He would still have some distortion, but it will be shrunken down to 10 per cent of what it is now ... and he will look much, much, much better," Mulliken said in an interview at the end of November.
Mulliken said the growth could eventually block Son's airway and diminish his blood's ability to clot if left untreated.
Sclerotherapy would involve injections of liquids that could gradually reduce the size of the growth. But there are risks associated with sclerotherapy, including possible nerve damage and scarring.
Still, Walter said they're both anxious to head to Boston and start the process.
"It's more a sense of relief that finally, finally we've got the plan in place that we need and he is going to get the treatment he needs," Walter said.
Son arrived in Toronto last summer after an official with the Children's Bridge Foundation, an Ottawa-based charity, found him at a Vietnamese orphanage.
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