LRS Care: Remembering Dayong

Little Red Scarf, located in Lanzhou, Gansu and in Yunnan, provides financial support and encouragement to children suffering from congenital heart disease. In addition, they provide families with post-operative care and help the children sustain a healthy lifestyle.

​Editor's Note: Our staff wanted to help make Dayong's last days as meaningful as possible, so they asked him to write about his home province Gansu. Read the translated version of this young author's article called "Gansu: My Beloved Home Province."

Our Last Communication

The last time I spoke to Dayong was on July 1, 2015. Before then I had asked him to write an article about Gansu. So on the morning of July 1st he sent it to me, and I thanked him. Afterwards, I didn’t receive any messages from him. In the early part of July, I introduced Huzi (another LRS beneficiary) to Dayong on QQ so they could correspond, but Dayong still didn’t answer. I thought he had gone to Xi’an to get his usual medicine. 

About half a month later, I sent another message to Dayong via QQ, but still didn’t receive any reply. I became worried and called his number. I thought he might have been hospitalized again, and I couldn’t help but feel nervous. Eventually, a low voice answered the phone. It was Dayong’s father. I asked him if everything was ok with Dayong. After a few seconds of silence, his father told me Dayong passed away on July 2nd. I knew that day would come, but I did not expect it would come so soon.

Summertime Wishes

His father said he took Dayong to Beijing in June, and the doctor said his situation had become more serious. Dayong was depressed. He left me a QQ voice message at that time, saying he had never been so depressed. I encouraged him to change his QQ profile picture to an optimistic one. I told him that medical science was developing, and medicine would be developed to treat him. He shifted the topic to his mother’s birthday, saying he didn’t know how to celebrate it or what to buy. I suggested he and his older sister could try cooking a meal for their mom. “Good idea,” he replied. “I’ll start preparing.” I imagined him happily running out the door to buy groceries, but in reality, there’s no way he could run.

Scholarly Dreams

If Dayong didn’t have to resign from school because of his health issues, he would have taken the college entrance examination. His father said he offered advice to his classmates on how to apply to universities. His classmates took him as an adviser and asked for his opinions. 

His father said Dayong seemed very happy during his last days. He rode his father’s motorbike through the village. When he came back, he returned the motorbike key to his father. He finished his supper and lay down in bed. He asked his mother to plug in the oxygen for him, and his last words were “I want to take the exam.” Dayong went peacefully with his dreams. His biggest dream was to take the college entrance exam and attend Shanghai Jiaotong University. He said when he got ill the happiest thing was to go to school in his wheelchair. In his spare time sometimes he would write about love. But Dayong wasn’t able to enjoy the beautiful times that life could bring. His life was over at age 20. 

An Encourager, A Writer

I knew Dayong for more than a year. I first met him in March 2014, when he came to Lanzhou for treatment. Because of his congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension, he suffered from heart failure. I talked with him in his hospital ward, getting to know his family situation. Two days later I went to visit him again. His hospital bed was empty, but he had left behind 2 letters. One was for a patient who had an operation that day, encouraging him to fight the disease; and the other was for Little Red Scarf. He told us about another child with congenital heart disease who needed help. Dayong told us his stay in the hospital was only to relieve his symptoms. The only way to really cure him would be through a heart and lung transplant. For his peasant family, that was impossible.

Later on we introduced iSEEK to him so he could make friends with others who also suffered from illnesses. Because his cell phone could access QQ but no other websites, whenever there was iSEEK news we would tell it to him. Dayong loved to write. In order to give Dayong more opportunities to communicate with the outside world via the Internet, Little Red Scarf gave him monthly subsidies for his cell phone, and for his medicine. Dayong said he couldn’t lose the care he got from Little Red Scarf. But in fact, he gave us more positive energy than the help we had given him. Even in his wheelchair, he excelled academically. Even from his hospital bed, he wrote encouraging letters, thinking of other patients.

Still an Inspiration

Dayong was an honest, diligent, kind, and helpful guy. His virtues have been an inspiration to us. Although he is gone, he did his best during those short 20 years. His profile is still there on QQ. Maybe his father doesn’t know how to close it. Seeing Dayong’s image online still brings us warmth. I would rather believe he had just gone to university with his classmates, maybe in Shanghai or Beijing…

Editor's Note: Our staff wanted to help make Dayong's last days as meaningful as possible, so they asked him to write about his home province Gansu. Read the translated version of this young author's article called "Gansu: My Beloved Home Province."

Original article written by Ying Guan, translated by Maggie Li, edited by Yanyan Zhang and Carolyn D