There is a story circulating the net that was so thought-provoking I decided to contemplate it a while before blogging about it. The story is of a young man in China who was paralysed after a motorcycle crash. Some sites report that he received compensation, but it was so meagre it soon disappeared. Compensation or not, his family could no longer afford the medical bills and were forced to take their son out of the hospital.
The son could not breathe unaided so they took turns using a plastic ventilator, pumped laboriously by hand, to keep him alive. This went on for two years, then they built a homemade ventilator which they ran at night to give themselves a break. They couldn't afford the electricity to run it all the time, so during the day they went back to using the hand ventilator.
Their plight recently came to the attention of the Chinese media and prompted donations to the family, as well as a proper ventilator, and hopefully now their lives will be a little easier. The story is being broadly used to highlight the inadequacies of the Chinese health system, but beneath the propaganda runs the story of the deepest love and commitment, and the lengths a parent will go to for their child. It's as heartwarming as it is astounding that these people were forced to struggle alone for so long.
Such a situation could not arise here, I hope. A UK hospital would not have turfed him out, the compensation would have been much higher, the state support, even in these straitened times, would have been more than adequate to provide care.
I'm not sure what moves me the most about the story: the extraordinary love, or the difference between our worlds.
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