7 years ago, after her broken marriage, Ms. Le Thi Ngoc Huyen (born in 1992), residing in Roc La hamlet, Tay Yen A commune, An Bien district (Kien Giang) had to raise her child alone. Since then, Ms. Huyen has been both a mother and a father to take care of her family and her children's future.
With no stable job, every day she travels to sell ripe mangoes in the Cau Treo area - the border between Tay Yen A and Hung Yen communes to save every penny to take care of food, clothes, and every notebook for her children to go to school. Each day, they earn about 100,000 VND to pay for their children's education and food and living expenses for the mother and child.
With a small income, her already struggling life became even more stagnant when in 2023, she discovered she had stage 4 breast cancer. Chemicals, medications and treatments caused her body to gradually weaken, and her hair to gradually fall out with each chemotherapy. Every month of treatment, the cost of several million VND is huge, causing her to fall into a state of exhaustion despite having health insurance support.
Thinking that the pain was at its peak, at the end of April 2025, she continued to receive more reports, the tumor metastasized into the brain, and had to be treated continuously for radiotherapy or it would be life-threatening. Her parents are nearly 60 years old, and their circumstances are not much better, and they are raising another young grandchild.
The simple, poor house and the challenging journey of being alone stuck with Ms. Huyen, but she still never gave up hope because her greatest asset was her son. Gia Phuc is currently studying grade 9 at Tay Yen A Secondary School and is racing every day to review for the exam because this year he is about to take the transition exam. During school days and in the afternoon, Phuc took the time to go to the hospital to visit his mother.
Ms. Huyen choked up as she confided: "As long as I have breath, I will worry about my child. God told everyone to be brave, if they were unlucky enough to get there, they would accept it. But my dream is to hope to get rid of my illness and be healthy enough so that my children can study well.
Fighting the disease alone, raising children alone, just hoping for a better future. On tired days, with pain in her body, Ms. Huyen still wakes up early to try to go to the wholesale market because she loves her children, the fault of her children is not having money to go to school. That mother still prays every day to be cured of all diseases to be a support for her child, so that her child does not miss the journey to school.
Mr. Tran Van Khoi - Chairman of the Tay Yen A Commune Red Cross Society emotionally said that in the first days of May 2025, while at the Kien Giang Provincial Oncology Hospital, hundreds of kilograms of ripe mangoes were taken back by Ms. Huyen before and could not be sold. So everyone joined hands to call for Huyen to consume all of it. Now in the hospital for treatment, Ms. Huyen is single-parented and takes care of herself because her parents are at home taking care of her grandchild, and her son goes to school.
"Everyone feels sorry for Huyen and her mother's situation and their illness, but still tries to work as a trader to send their children to school. The locality also tries its best to help in some way, but I hope that people from near and far can join hands to help Huyen overcome difficulties, Mr. Khoi shared.
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