I can think of a life with a cleft lip that was abandoned by a relative, but I can never imagine that it would be brutally poisoned by a relative, which indeed happened not long ago in Chongming, Shanghai, where a child born with a cleft lip was killed with potassium chloride by his grandfather (who no longer deserves that honorific). The motive of the grandfather’s murder is clear without explanation. But in this case, we should not just stop at identifying the motive for the murder and then bringing the criminal to justice, but we should also think about why he had this motive for the murder and why he did not have another force of justice (such as the fear of the law, the fear of life, the kindness to the weak, ……) to prevent this sin from occurring. In this case, we are all bystanders. As bystanders, if we only stop at astonishment and condemnation, we will always be the spectators of a tragic scene. What we should do is to plant the power of justice in people’s consciousness so that such tragedies do not happen again. For this reason, I put this excerpt from the article “Plastic and Cosmetic Essays” on my website (with slight changes), hoping that more people will see it and look at this special group of people with cleft lips with love. For them, what can heal the cleft in their upper lip if there is no more affection, no more love, and no more value for life in the same way? As a doctor, I always find no pleasant inspiration to write articles about diseases. So it will be, because in the daily work, always see so much sadness and grief. In such an environment, joy is always kidnapped and shot by melancholy, so there is no more pleasure. And how do these sadnesses arise? There is only one reason, and that is despair kills the love of people. Not long ago, a celebrity couple unexpectedly gave birth to a child with a cleft lip. Because of their prestige, the birth of this child was widely covered by the media, and it can be said that it was a considerable ripple in the world of public opinion. Because the illness of this little life is related to my profession, I paid some attention to the development of the situation in the midst of my busy schedule. In this case, what made me feel most emotional was not the fact that this life could attract so much attention, but the words and attitude of the child’s father, although I am not sure if the words came from the heart and if this attitude was in a helpless state. He believes that despite the child’s congenital deficiencies, he feels that his child is the most beautiful in the world. His statement resonated with me because in many parents of congenital malformation patients I have come in contact with, this attitude is exactly what they do not have but should have, even though they also love their children. The birth of life as one of nature’s shining processes often comes into our view through television programs. Some in the sunny day, some in the moonlit night, some in the vast grasslands, some in the mysterious jungle, or an elk, or an antelope, or a heron, or a pair of mandarin ducks. In nature, the birth process of new life is often accompanied by a lot of danger, but, no matter how dangerous the surrounding environment is, we can always see the shadow of the great “mother” around the new life. They lick away the membranes, peck through the egg shell, and melt motherhood into the first sight of the new life, making it feel safe and enjoy the warmth. What happens to a patient with cleft lip when you can’t help but get your eyes wet? One morning, just after the department had finished its shift, a group of us students, were gathered around an old professor, listening to his legendary stories about performing surgery. At that moment, there was a noise in the corridor and a man in a tattered coat came straight to the old professor who was giving a speech with great enthusiasm, in spite of the janitor’s discouragement. As an old specialist, it is common to be surrounded by patients’ families, so the old professor was not the least bit alarmed by this unexpected guest. He looked at the visitor calmly and waited for him to explain his purpose, while a group of our students instinctively lined up on either side, in a King Kong formation. The visitor was here for a consultation on cleft lip, a relative of his (probably his daughter-in-law or some other relative, but it is common to not tell the truth in such cases.) Two days ago, he gave birth to a boy with cleft lip, and the purpose of his visit was to ask when the operation would take place and how much it would cost. The old professor was very patient and meticulous as he asked and answered. His calm and patient character was both an eye-opener and an admiration to a group of us students. However, just as we were giving the old professor a sideways glance, he suddenly became furious and shouted at the visitor. It turned out that towards the end of the consultation, the visitor suddenly asked if the child could be given to the hospital after treatment, and that this had been negotiated at home and the family (including the child’s parents) had agreed. It was a heartless decision of the family to deprive an already unfortunate child of his mother’s love and affection and send him to the hospital. No wonder the always amiable old professor had such a fit of rage! To be realistic, among all congenital malformations, cleft lip is not really the heaviest one, not even very heavy, however, since it occurs in the five senses of a person and concerns the face of the family, it becomes a fierce evil in the eyes of some parents or clansmen, despite the fact that it is not a very heavy malformation. Because of this, many children with cleft lips are mercilessly abandoned after birth before they can take a sip of their mother’s milk, and orphanages or children’s villages become a haven for these children’s lives. Of course, there are also children who are abandoned because of their families’ financial problems, but I think that seems to be a far-fetched reason. For these children, what is important is not the money to cure them, but the love that they deserve. With this love, the money will be there. In my later work, I treated several children from orphanages who had “mothers” who were volunteers working in the orphanages. Their unfailing care kept these shoots from dying. However, despite their best efforts, the congenital emotional malnutrition of these seedlings has left a permanent imprint on their lives. Compared to children with cleft lips who are cared for by their biological parents, their clear eyes are filled with the dust of loneliness and despair, and their personalities are filled earlier with the mud of shyness and obstinacy, which will be deposited more and more in their lives and become an insurmountable wall that prevents them from succeeding. Raising a child with a cleft lip is a hundred times more difficult than raising a normal child, and the outcome of a cleft lip is closely related to the quality of post-operative care. This care is the responsibility of the parents and is a reflection of their love for their child, and whether the care is in place or not is, in my opinion, always related to selfless love. Love leads to action, love perfects the details, and formal care without love is like a person who does not like flowers and plants, does not know how to fertilize them, does not know when to water them, and eventually the flowers wither. The hospital’s daily morning shift and evening check-in is a routine of hospital work and a major feature. Because of this every day, so in the daily shift, if there are no major things that can stimulate people’s nerves to produce excitement, everyone’s face will be very bland, and in many cases, the shift is a breeze brushing the water, and few people will have ripples of expression on their faces. One of my most memorable shift changes had to do with the care of cleft lip. At the time, all the people in the department had a look of surprise on their faces. It went like this. A boy with a cleft lip who was hospitalized a few days ago had accidentally fallen after being discharged from the hospital, and the incision that had just healed was re-cracked. He came to the hospital and had to be reluctantly sutured again because of heavy local edema and brittle tissue. A patient with cleft lip, after suffering from one surgery, the incision was reopened due to trauma, which no one would expect. Yet, if one looks for the cause in terms of affection, it seems inevitable. On the first day the unfortunate boy was admitted to the hospital, he was accompanied by an elderly woman with a hobbled gait. She may be the child’s grandmother, or his grandmother, in any case, this face full of sad old man, from the first day the boy was hospitalized, is his only “guardian”. Every day, when I was at work, I would see this thin old man by the hospital lawn or stairway, carrying her heart and liver, holding her hope, wandering there alone. A mist seemed to float perpetually in her eyes, her upper lids lowered and dull. Such an elderly person, who needs care and support in her own right, has to take on the responsibility of looking after the patients, a responsibility that needs to be taken on by young nurses in hospitals, how can she take it on? No matter how deep her love for the child was, it was difficult for her to take good care of the child and make sure that nothing was wrong, so it was inevitable that the child would die again. After another surgery, I saw the grandchildren again in the corridor of the ward. It was still the old man carrying the child on his back, still wandering aimlessly. This time, the layer of mist was not only floating in the old man’s eyes, but the child’s eyes were also dull. Two pairs of melancholy eyes, old and young desperate people. They are the epitome of the families of some cleft lip patients. This patient’s experience is the best proof that only love can make careful care possible. This situation of an old man and a young woman is a common occurrence in hospitals. Sometimes, I wonder why only the elderly are brave enough to give this kind of love. Are they in helplessness or in true love? An old man, in order to get the best treatment for her granddaughter, a baby girl with a severe cleft lip, knelt down in front of the young expert who was checking the room, despite her old age and dignity. Was she putting on a show? Was she begging our experts on her knees? I don’t think so. This is her love on her knees begging the heavens. Doctors in flesh and blood cannot afford this kind of kneeling to the ground, especially when our technology is not yet able to return this kind of shocking emotion. This is a waterless emotion, is not a kind of big gift to ask the heavens, this emotion, will let every caring person ask themselves, he can make this love without regret, can this love without shame, rather than indifferently walk away, for a few coins, fooling the world’s most sincere affection. If this kind of affection is not only in the grandparents and grandchildren, but coalesces in the whole unfortunate family, then the disaster will go far away and the patient will be happy for life. There is a couple who, after the birth of their cleft-lip child, decided not to have a second child (they could have one according to the policy), but to give all their love to this child. For this reason, they operated on their child in time, and when the child grew up, they told him that the scar on his upper lip was left by an injury when he was an hour old, so as not to create pressure on the child that he was a congenital deformity. They took up the entire pain for their children, and carried the burden of that half injustice of their children on their own shoulders as much as possible. Their painful efforts were rewarded with the normal development of their child’s character. Today, the child with the congenital deficiency is as happy as a normal child, learning and dealing with the world no differently than the children around him. Of course, I have met many, many parents who have gone out of their way to take their children around to seek medical help, and their love is touching. In fact, it is easier to repair a cleft lip, but the hardest thing to cure is the shadow of two generations’ hearts, and the only medicine to cure it is selfless love. There are always injustices in life, and giving birth to a life with physical defects is an injustice in the life of two or even three generations, but in front of the injustice of life, it is two different results whether to laugh at it or to welcome it with sadness. May all the children suffering from the disease in the world grow up happily and healthily under the shelter of selfless love, and all of them can have their lives cherished like others. If this paragraph of mine can serve this purpose, it will be as fortunate as my life to cure a case of patients.