Even tragedies often hide a silver lining. For one Jiangsu couple, their son would be taken from them in just 2 short days. Yet, their selflessness would give hope to others after they lost him, a couple of months shy of his 4th birthday.
“Mum, hug me”, said 46-month old, Xiao Zhujun, after his mother picked him up from kindergarten. He had a sudden headache and was feeling dizzy. They would be his last words.
That was about 15:30 on 5 May. One minute, he was talking and laughing, the next he began to vomit.
The boy’s mother hurriedly called her husband. 10 minutes later, he had picked them up and driven to the local hospital.
There, doctors told the parents that Xiao Zhujun was in a critical condition and needed to be immediately transferred to a superior facility. The boy’s father proposed Nanjing, but the doctor simply said, “Don’t waste time on the road”.
That was at Hongze Hospital, more than 2 hours drive from Nanjing. Transferring the boy to Huai’an First People’s Hospital, a neurosurgeon performed an emergency operation the afternoon of the following day.
To no avail. Xiao Zhujun had had a left frontal temporal lobe cerebral hemorrhage.
His cerebrovascular had ruptured, resulting in the hemorrhage and a cerebral herniation, explained Yang Lijuan, chief physician in the Hospital’s neonatal department to reporters for the Yangtze Evening News.
Yang said that when she told the boy’s father of his condition, Zhu understood very well, but then spoke a sentence that moved all the medical staff present. “Can you donate the child’s organs to people in need?”, he asked.
Xiao Zhujun spent his last night in a deep coma, but lasted only until the morning. The day after, 8 May, his parents gathered outside the operating theatre, shed their tears and watched as doctors, heads bowed, observed a moment of silence.
Getting to work, they spent the next hour extracting Xiao Zhujun’s liver, kidneys and cornea. The organs were then immediately rushed to hospitals where their respective transplant recipients awaited.
In his 46 months, Xiao Zhujun had brought much joy to the family. In death, he would go on to give six people a shot at a normal life.
