HALIFAX, N.S. - Like many 11-year-old boys, Son Pham has an idea as to what he wants to be when he grows up.

But unlike most kids his age, the slight, bright-eyed boy already has an intimate knowledge of the profession he wants to pursue -- pediatric plastic surgery.

"I want to be a doctor," he answered quickly at his Halifax home, days before heading to Boston to undergo the first of many surgeries for a large facial abnormality.

"Just like my doctor."

Son, who has been living in Halifax since late last year, will have part of an inner portion of his lip removed Thursday in an hour-long surgery aimed at reducing the growth, which is the size of a small football.

The operation at Children's Hospital Boston is a pivotal point in a year-long medical journey that has seen the young boy undergo 11 uncomfortable procedures to shrink the growth and the insertion of a tracheotomy to help him breathe.

Olwyn Walter, who has been taking care of Son at her Halifax home with her husband and two young daughters, said he was busy playing video games and watching movies Wednesday in Boston as he prepared for the operation.

Son was also in a pre-op appointment for more than two hours to have his vitals done and get ready for what will be his 13th time under anesthesia.

But Walter said the rigours of his hospital visits didn't seem to faze the youngster, who was singing and laughing with nurses Wednesday.

"He's amazingly upbeat," she said from her hotel. "He seems pretty relaxed about this one."

Still, she said he was somewhat anxious as he awaited the surgery and the new "look" it will bring.

"Each time he has surgery - and I expect there will be a number of surgeries - he's going to have to get used to looking at a new face in the mirror, but he's very ready for that," she said.

"He gets frustrated and says, 'I just want to look like everybody else' and that's why this is really pivotal. This is the first major step toward him looking like everybody else."

Walter, who works with the Children's Bridge Foundation, said she expects doctors to remove a large mass of tissue on the inside of the little boy's lip so it won't protrude from his mouth as much.

The deformity is a birth defect that has grown steadily since Son was born in Vietnam and abandoned by his parents at an orphanage at the age of three.

She doesn't expect Son will look dramatically different after the first surgery. The defect will eventually be reduced by about 90 per cent by the time doctors at the renowned vascular anomaly centre finish their work.

He will likely have to undergo more schlerotherapy sessions, in which doctors inject fluids into the growth to help harden it and shrink it. Son has already had 11 of the procedures since the hospital agreed last year to treat the boy.

Their decision came after Son was discovered in the orphanage by a member of the foundation and came to Canada, believing that doctors at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto would be able to reduce, if not remove, the lesion.

That changed when, after months of reviewing his case, they said they wouldn't proceed with the treatment because of its social and psychological impact on the boy, including the fact it would be carried out over several years.

Dr. John Mulliken, a plastic surgeon who specializes in vascular anomalies at the Boston hospital, disagreed with the Toronto physicians and said he was confident he could treat the lesion.

Officials at the Boston hospital wouldn't comment on the surgery.