Table of Contents

July 2012 Newsletter

Children currently being helped

Pannan Li (Boy, 7, congenital heart disease): has successfully finished his surgery at the end of June and was discharged from the hospital.	Wanyuan Jiang (Girl, 12, congenital heart disease): needs to take medicine for a short period of time and has the surgery in 6 months.	Minhe Qin (Boy, 10, burn trauma): finished his 3-month treatment and left the US at the end of June to go back to his home in China.	Jiangli Liu (Girl, 5, congenital giant nervus cell): finished her first surgery, will have her second surgery in 3-6 months.	Wei Liu (Boy, 11, whole body fractures): continues to receive treatment at No. 304 Hospital in Beijing.
Boyao Zheng (Boy, 1, cerebral palsy): his partial paralysis has significantly improved.	Peng Wang (Boy, 3, cerebral palsy): after being discharged, his grandmother took him home.	Qixin Wu (Girl, 11, congenital heart disease): after waiting for many years, she was ready to receive surgery in Shanghai. Her family is trying to come up with the money.	Chunmei Cheng (Girl, 5, congenital heart disease): will do surgery in August or September. Currently, she needs $30,000 Yuan or more for her surgery.	Yinuo Liu (Boy, 9 month-old, congenital heart disease): after surgery, he didn’t recover well and passed away in mid-June.

Call for help: Help Mengyi, a girl who has fought Hirschsprung's disease persistently for 4 years

6-year-old Mengyi Wang was born in Gaocheng, Hebei Province. Soon after she was born, she had problems with vomiting, passing gas and stools. After she was treated in Hebei Children’s Hospital, her symptoms were temporarily relieved. However her symptoms reappeared quickly afterward. When she was sent back to the hospital, she was diagnosed with Hirschsprung’s disease. Mengyi had surgery when she was about 2, but the surgery failed. The reason it failed was related to her RH-negative blood type and concurrently she lacked coagulation factor. The local hospital was not able to continue her treatment. If she was not treated, she was not expected to live long. Surprisingly, afterwards Mengyi persistently fought the disease for another 4 years.

Mengyi grew up to be very clever and pretty. Her stomach was huge and she has many scars from her incision. Feces can come out from her incision at any time. She is in tremendous amount of pain and requires daily sterilization. In summer, if they don’t pay attention, maggots will grow. Sometimes she will have ulcers on her buttocks and have excretions from there. However, Mengyi was always very optimistic. She never cried during treatment or injections. When volunteers went to visit her, she recited a nursery rhyme with very small voice. Laying in bed, she picked up her pen with effort and wrote “12345.” She said she knew that there was hope to get better, so she was studying hard. The child’s family was in economic distress. Her father was a laborer in another city all year long. Her grandmother and mother took care of her and her grandfather looked after their family crops. These years, just Mengyi’s hospital and surgery fees cost $10,000 Yuan. The expenses on her daily living were a heavy burden too. Although they had a huge debt, the loving parents still expressed that even if there was only one thread of hope, they would sell everything to treat her illness.

The doctors' treatment plan is a 3-phase treatment. The 1st step is to do an ostomy to alleviate symptoms. The surgery fees are estimated to be $30,000 Yuan. Currently with the help from many parties, they finally fundraised enough money for the first phase of surgery. They are still actively trying to locate the money for the 2nd and 3rd phase of surgery. After a few months of waiting, Menyi finally was admitted to Beijing Children’s Hospital in July with volunteers’ effort. She started her first phase of treatment. Now her symptoms have been alleviated. Please extend your helping hand and don’t let a persistent Menyi lose her hope. Help her stand up from her hospital bed, go to school like other children and enjoy her childhood.

Up: This June Menyi and mom stayed at home, anxiously waiting for the opportunity to receive treatments.

Right: Mengyi on her bed writing down "12345" with effort.

Special Report: A Child Who Has Conquered Death

Pannan Li’s home is located in the cold and mountainous region of Zhanyi County, Yunnan Province. His family did not fear the hard living conditions. What worried them day and night was the possibility of losing their 7-year-old son. Pannan had complex pentalogy of Fallot and pulmonary atresia. He was deemed inoperable by local hospital physicians. However, Pannan’s family couldn’t stand to give up on him even though the physicians had. Later they heard the story about a boy Shaonan Liu who lives in the same village and had same serious heart disease. He was cured with the help of local Red Cross and A Life A Time Foundation. They contacted the volunteers of A Life A Time and found the precious life-saving opportunity for Pannan.

This June, probably because of chronic pressure, while Pannan’s hospital fund was still lacking and his treatment plan wasn’t confirmed, his mother felt that his disease was untreatable, so she divorced her husband and left her two children behind. Pannan’s father took on the huge burden of paying back loans, getting treatment for his son, and laboring in the fields. Determinedly, he said he would want to follow through with his child’s treatments even if he had to sell everything.

At the same time, volunteers were racing against the clock to fundraise and contact hospitals for Pannan Li. On the early morning of June 10, Pannan and his father finally came to Shanghai. On June 18, Pannan was admitted to the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center awaiting his surgery. On June 20, his surgery was successfully completed. What’s more surprising, the doctors found out he didn’t need the 2nd surgery. The kind-hearted and skillful doctors alleviated the pain for Pannan and his family and gave the child a second life!

At Pannan’s home. Severe heart disease made the child’s skin turn purple.	Pannan out of ICU	On the train back home with his dad.

Because of the complexity of Pannan's disease, from his admission on the 18th, volunteers had to face the reality of continuously increasing fees and the pressure of fundraising. Pannan’s father experienced huge burden on his shoulders. Being illiterate, he single-handedly took his child to Shanghai. Everywhere he went, he felt confused. Even simple matters like checking the balance of his hospital credit everyday, he had to ask assistance from another young patient’s parent in their room. Despite these difficulties, he was determined to save his child's life.

On June 29, Pannan and his father finally boarded the train home. Pannan was very happy. Although he was still hunching his back because of his wound, he was jumping around the whole way. Without his mother around, Pannan suddenly hugged the volunteer and stared at her closely. Maybe he was thinking about his mother. We wish Pannan will grow up happily and healthily, always!

Financial Report

Progress Report