HANOI - A 32-year-old man spoke for the first time in his life after undergoing an operation on his abcessed foot, doctors from a southern provincial hospital said yesterday. A doctor from the casualty department of Binh Dinh Provincial Hospital said that Truong Van Xa uttered his first words to describe his pain on Dec 31. Although Xa had been injected with local anaesthetic, when the operating doctor made the first incision on his infected wound, he screamed. “Oh my gosh, it’s so painful,” Xa exclaimed, according to his doctor, Truong Thi Thom who performed the operation. Xa, who until that moment had lived his life as a deaf mute, astonished the doctor by then saying “thank you doctor.”

In an abandoned LandRover I took off my shoes and made an incision in my foot. The above newspaper article I left behind.