Vu Thu Thao came in first at the C-group entrance exam to Hanoi University of Education. However, not many know that, before the exam, Thao came close to death. VietNamNet Bridge – Vu Thu Thao from Thai Binh province has become well known as the student who came in first at the C-group entrance exam to Hanoi University of Education. However, not many know that, before the exam, Thao came close to death.

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Vu Van Thoi, her father, is a man of small stature. He related that the most frightening moment in his life came when he was working in the rice field and received news that Thao was writhing in bed with a headache. He dropped his plow and ran home to take Thao to Viet-Duc Hospital in Hanoi.

A parent’s nightmare

“Doctors concluded that my daughter had a brain tumor. The news frightened me. I was shaking like a leaf when they said that,” he admitted.

On that day that they scheduled her brain operation, Thoi recalled, it rained continuously.

Prior, Thao had a haircut for the operation. “Why do I have to have a haircut? Why do I have to have an operation?” Thao repeated the same questions to her father over and over. “I did not know how to answer her,” Thao’s father acknowledged. He did not tell his daughter about her brain tumour.

The man held his daughter tightly. “You just have a small problem with a nerve. The doctor said that an operation will help,” he explained to her.

He brought Thao to the hospital alone, because her mother had to stay at home to arrange money for her operation.

“The doctor said the operation would finish at 9-10 o’clock. But I still could not see my daughter at 1am the next morning,” the father related. “I was worried to death. I was only relieved when I could go in to see her at 2:30am.”

When Thao became ill, her parents had to move heaven and earth to support the whole family. They sold two tons of rice and 10 chickens for 10 million dong. They also borrowed 50 million dong from relatives and neighbours.

Thao escaped her fatal illness and made a very high score on her university entrance exam: a 9.75/10 for history, 9.25 for geography and 8.5 for literature. Thao did not go to exam preparation classes, because it would cost too much money. She borrowed notebooks from friends and tried to study on her own.

Don’t despair

No one would know that Thao has brain surgery when looking at her plump face with smile. No one could imagine that Thao has overcome such big difficulties.

“My grandfather died early last year. After that, my mother broke her leg when she was working in the rice field. In May, I suffered from the brain tumor,” Thao recounted. “At that time, my only wish was to be well again to return to school. Don’t be desperate – I always told myself.”

“I cried bitterly when I heard I had a brain tumor. I was afraid that I would not wake up. I even thought about death,” Thao recalled.

“I then thought that I would kill myself if I was too worried. I told to myself that I needed to cherish hope. I have my future ahead and I have a lot of things to do,” she explained.

Thao loves a poem that says people need an iron will to overcome all difficulties in life. She brought her iron will into the surgical ward with her.

Now Thao is preparing to go to university, while her father works as a building laborer, a job that brings him 60,000 dong a day. He remarked that even though he still owes 25 million dong to his relatives, he must try every way to bring his daughter to study at the university.

Source: Tien phong