(Ecns.cn)--Guo Liqing, a rural woman living in Hebei Province, was given two choices by the doctors to save her son, who suffers from giant congenital nevi, an underlying cause of skin cancer: use grafts of acellular dermal matrices (ADMs) imported from the U.S. or grafts of skin from her own body.
Guo and her husband live on an annual income of less than 5,000 yuan (about $786)， and because the first option would cost 1.6 million yuan, the decision had already been made for them.
"I will use my own skin to save the boy," said Guo.
Guo gave birth to her second son Wang Zining in 2007, causing the already poor family to live in even further reduced circumstances.
Zining was born with pigmented nevi—dark-colored, often hairy patches of skin—all over his body. When a nurse showed the baby to Guo after the delivery, she immediately burst into tears.
"His skin was dark, covered with marks almost everywhere, on the arms, legs and even his back," Guo recalled, adding that the child's back used to become boiling hot in summer, but he could not sweat.
Though smaller in infants, nevi usually continue to grow with the child, and skin cancer (such as malignant melanoma and other types) may develop in up to 15 percent (1 out of 6) of people with larger or giant nevi, often in childhood, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The risk is even higher for larger or giant congenital nevi located on the back or abdomen.
After hearing from a local resident that another boy suffering from the same disease had died of skin cancer at the age of 18, Guo became severely distraught and took Zining to a hospital in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei, about 50 kilometers from their village. 18 days of treatment there, however, produced no improvement.
Guo then took her son to a Beijing hospital for skin grafts, where she was told by Dr. Zou Xiaofang that "The operation would cost hundreds of thousands of yuan."
Guo only had 50,000 yuan, which she had borrowed from relatives and fellow villagers. But thanks to the Angel Mom Foundation, which offered her 30,000 yuan, and the hospital, which waived 70 percent of the total charges, Zining was finally able to afford the grafts.
Not long after, Guo offered to transplant her own skin instead of her husband's.
"You are the backbone of our family, and you also must take care of your parents and grandparents. Our whole family would collapse if anything happened to you," Guo told him.
"My son and I will support each other during the procedure. We will get through it," added Guo, who refused to take analgesics (300 yuan each) to ease the pain.
"Please help my son," she pleaded.
In more than three hours, the doctors successfully transplanted 1,600 square centimeters of skin from Guo's abdomen to Zining's back and legs.
Guo said it was hard to put the pain into words. For every twitch, she would break into a sweat. "They were peeling off a layer of skin from my body," she noted.
But Guo had to pull herself together in front of Zining, who was also suffering. "I was afraid that my tears would make him feel even more pain."
"My son was crying bitterly on one side, while my wife was moaning on the other side. But I could do nothing," sobbed Guo's husband.
Only four days after the operation, Guo decided to stop receiving medical treatment from the hospital. They could no longer afford the 1,000-yuan-per-day expense. Her husband had to sell off all their grain to pay the remaining medical bills.
The pain has been far from over since they returned home. Zining's medicine costs 200 yuan every day, but he is still tortured by a red and swollen body.
After dropping the medical treatments, the scars on Guo's abdomen began to harden, which, according to the doctor, would make it difficult for her to bend over in the future.
But Guo shows no concern for herself. "It doesn't matter to me, as long as my boy gets well."
