Profiles

Sacrificing a childhood

By He Dan and Qiu Bo (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-06-17 07:59

BEIJING - Besides going to school, Huang Feng's typical day involves cooking three meals and doing the laundry.

Huang Feng sits beside her paraplegic father Huang Zhiren in a Beijing hospital in this file photo. The 13-year-old girl from Anhui province has been looking after her father since 2002. Feng Yongbin / China Daily

She also takes care of her paraplegic father by feeding, dressing and nursing him.

Huang is only 13, but she has played this adult role for the past eight years.

"If I don't take care of him, who else will?" asked Huang, who comes from a small village in Anhui province.

An accident in 2002 paralyzed her father, Huang Zhiren, from the waist down and his wife divorced him a year later.

The man became bedridden and could not do anything on his own. Huang Zhiren said he could not accept his condition after being the breadwinner of the family for so long. He even tried to end his life, to stop being a burden to his then 6-year-old daughter and his blind mother in her 70s.

"When I was depressed and went on a hunger strike, my daughter also didn't eat anything for two days," Huang Zhiren told China Daily.

"I realized then that I should try and live well for Feng Feng."

Up till today, the girl will not eat her meals until her father has finished his meals.

While taking care of her father involves countless challenges, Huang Feng has learnt to take care of him in the best way she can.

The family depends on a annual subsistence allowance of 1,700 yuan ($249) from the government. But Huang never gave up the idea of providing her father with adequate medical treatment.

In July last year, she learned from a television program that a number of hospitals in Beijing might have the capability to cure her father. With 6,000 yuan borrowed from relatives and friends, Huang Feng dropped out of school and took her father to Beijing.

She pulled him in a makeshift bed with wheels, searching for a suitable hospital in the city. She begged for money at the gate of a supermarket at night. But the money she collected was still not enough for her father's treatment, which cost about 60,000 yuan. They had to return home one month later.

But in April, Huang Feng received a call. A man she met in Beijing last year told her that the General Hospital of Armed Police Forces was willing to treat her father after its staff heard about her plight.

An Yihua, the attending doctor of Huang Feng's father and head of the department of neural stem cells, said Huang Zhiren has successfully passed the first stage of treatment and suggested a second surgery after half a year of rehabilitation.

"The previous surgery helped Huang with a long-term fever and he is now much better," An said.

"It's really difficult to imagine a girl nursing an adult patient since she was five," An said.

In cases of severe paraplegia caused by spinal cord injury, patients can easily suffer from bedsores and other afflictions without careful nursing, but Huang had none of such problems, the doctor said.

"The girl helped her father avoid all of these," An said.

"It's definitely a miracle."

A patient sharing Huang Zhiren's ward said the girl has been a great source of inspiration and that she "fears nothing".

A lot of people have been similarly touched by Huang Feng's efforts to treat her father and have shown their support. Employees in the department of neural stem cells donated more than 25,000 yuan in the past few days and the hospital also helped Huang Feng open a bank account to receive donations.

For the first time in her life, Huang Feng also celebrated Children's Day on June 1 this year with students from Beijing Jianhua Experimental School.

"The school prepared 20 programs for the celebrations and I had a great time there," she said.

"I just hope my father will be able to take care of himself in the future, so that I can return to school."