blessed by heaven

In his first few months, Tian You was shuttled back and forth through a series of hospitals and specialists in Beijing. Americans are quick to judge China for its disregard of human rights, but in a strange twist, this little boy was attended at several hospitals before being allowed to go with his caretaker to a facility in Singapore for lifesaving corrective surgery. Surgery to correct a deformity that, had it been diagnosed in utero in the States, would most certainly have led to an abortion. China valued the life of this child enough to allow him travel and attention for a birth defect that would have at best profferred a slim prognosis just 5 years ago; it is knowledge that could, perhaps, be instructive.

Tian You, or Youyou, as his ayi calls him, was born with cloacal exstrophy, a birth defect so severe in his case that it is seen in only one out of 400,000 births. At birth, a bilateral hernia revealed his bladder and intestines, he had only one kidney, and his genitals were affected. There are several stories about his arrival at hospital and elsewhere, like underground legends. "He was left in a shoebox in a police station." "He was found on the side of the road." It's as if every story of origin one might hear about an orphaned child in China became Tian You's story, his origin.

In the end, it was the nuns who brought him to the foster home. What happened in the spaces between is unfathomable, untraceable. The foster home named him "Blessed by Heaven" hastily as they sped in a car to another hospital in Beijing, where he stayed for weeks before he was returned to his ayi in the foster home.

It seemed that nobody in China quite knew how to help this little boy, who smiled weakly in his photos despite his still-gaping wound. The woman who co-founded the foster home where Tian You lived had done so after adopting her own child, a little girl with massive abdominal issues. With care and proper medical attention, the little girl thrived, and her mother decided her arms must be opened to more children. She hired caretakers, wrote for grants, took in children, raised funds, launched the dream with her partner, a retired doctor...she was tireless in her efforts.

She was tireless in her crusade to save Tian You. It was decided that Tian You would be sent to a hospital for women and children in Singapore, and that there, his wounds would be closed and his body mended.