Devoted to mom: Fan's story touches the heart
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Shanghai Daily, October 15, 2011
A college student in central China has won widespread admiration after details of her struggle to juggle studies with caring for her bedridden mother were featured in the 22-year-old's microblog.
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Fan Yajing, a 22-year-old arts student, holds her paralyzed mother in her arms to move her to bed. Fan has won widespread admiration after details of her struggle to juggle her studies while caring for her bedridden mother are featured in her microblog. Fan's mother suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in April. |
Fan Yajing's mother Xun Guifang, a divorced peasant in east Jiangxi Province, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in April and fell into a coma.
Unable to afford the medical bills, Fan's stepfather left.
Doctors told Fan her mother's chances of survival were slim.
"I stared at my mom as she lay motionless on the bed, her face pale and skinny," Fan wrote in her microblog.
From time to time, Fan posted her thoughts online. "Please don't leave me, mom. Open your eyes and look at me. I want desperately to talk with you," she wrote.
After nearly a month, her mother came out of her coma, but remained bedridden and hardly able to move.
When Fan returned to college in early June, an uncle offered to take care of her mother in his home in Jiangsu Province.
But a month later, when the fine arts student's summer vacation began, she was saddened to find her mother sleeping in dirty pajamas and sheets with bedsores covering her back.
"I couldn't blame my uncle, he had a large family to feed. I realized I was the only one who could take good care of my mom and make her live with dignity," Fan said.
She has stayed with her mother ever since and updates her mother's condition online.
"Today mom took her first two steps in three months! Dear Mom, I'll be at your side for ever," she wrote.
Another stroke
When the new term began, Fan took her mother to Huangshi City, where she was to start her senior year at Hubei Normal University.
But shortly after they settled down in a rented home near campus, Fan's mother had another stroke and was in hospital again.
By then, Fan's story had moved thousands of people. They left messages conveying respect for her and their best wishes for her mother's swift recovery.
Donations began to pour in. Her schoolmates donated more than 25,000 yuan (US$3,917) in two days and at least 100,000 yuan from Internet users moved by Fan's microblog.
Fan has donated 10 percent of the donations to a charity that helps needy senior citizens like her mother.
The Huangshi government has offered Fan's mother a medical insurance package previously granted only to local citizens.
Fan said she spends most of the day nursing her mother in hospital and teaches painting to earn some money.
"I want to buy new clothes to help my mom cheer up. She's always been neat and elegant, even when she worked in the fields," Fan said.
She calls her mom "the beauty" and decorates her ward with fresh flowers. "I hope she will spend every day of her life happily and with dignity."
Fan said she hopes to run a garment store and decorate it with her paintings. "I hope my mother will be proud of me."
"She's a role model for the younger generation," said Zhang Yanqin, an official from Fan's hometown, Yugan County.
