Touching story: How 18-year-old boy killed himself so parents could afford brother’s medical bills (READ)
A teenager in China committed suicide in order to save his brother’s life after they were both diagnosed with kidney disease.
18-year-old Hongtao drank pesticide so that his parents could afford treatment for his older brother, Honghui, 20.
Both boys contracted Uremia, a symptom of kidney failure, and their parents had to sell almost everything they had to raise money for medical bills.
Daily Mail reports:
Unable to afford the mounting medical bills, their parents, Chuanyou and wife Zheng Tingxia, sold almost everything they owned in search of two matching kidneys to save their son’s lives.
Then, as time was beginning to run out, Hongtao locked himself in his room and drank pesticide, dying an agonising death.
In a heart-rending gesture of brotherly love, his body was found by a note, which included the words: ‘Brother, when you are cured, please tell me and it will be enough for
me.
Up until summer 2010 life was good for Gao Chuanyou, his wife Zheng Tingxia and their two sons.
Both boys were at the top of their class in school and the future seemed bright as they put the finishing touches to the new house in the county of Funan in Anhui province in the central of China.
But then disaster struck when the eldest, Honghui, after a month of illness was diagnosed with uremia.
Doctors told his parents that only a kidney transplant could save their son’s life. But then, just as they were coming to terms with this disaster, Hongtao was diagnosed with the same condition.
Grief: Mother Zheng Tingxia lays flowers at her son’s grave. His death prompted a flurry of donations, and after a two-year search, a match was found for his brother
The boys’ father sold everything they had including their brand-new, almost-finished house and borrowed heavily travelling around the country to various medical institutes in a bid to find a solution.
When the money ran out, teachers and friends of the two boys managed to raise another £10,000 for further treatment. But it was not enough.
Doctors had hoped that a transplant from the parents might be suitable but the boys’ father was not the right tissue match, while their mother fell seriously ill when she learned of her son’s condition rendering her inadmissible as a donor.
In the note he said: ‘Having both of us is ruining you, I hope now that you will be able to concentrate on my brother and save his life. When he survives as I know he will, I simply want him to say to me I made it, and I will be content’In order to continue the treatment to keep the boys alive, the parents even began begging on the street.
Seeing his parents slowly falling into ruin and after learning that there was no tissue match, locked himself in his room, wrote a short note to his family and drank pesticide. There he died in agony.
In the note he said: ‘Having both of us is ruining you, I hope now that you will be able to concentrate on my brother and save his life. When he survives as I know he will, I simply want him to say to me I made it, and I will be content.’
His selfless act made headline across China and donations flooded in. Then, at the end of last year, after a two-year search, a match was found.
Honghui, now 23, has successfully undergone a kidney transplant and is expected to make a full recovery.
But for dad Gao Chuanyou, 44, it is a bittersweet moment. He told local media: ‘I wonder perhaps how we can afford to be happy with Gao Hongtao, but we will take it one step at a time.’
