Center gives dying kids one last shot at life
Print Edition
Yang Yueqing can still recall her very first sight of “Olivia” three years ago.
“Olivia was in my arms, small, skinny and dying, staring blankly at the world,” recalled the nurse. Born with cerebral palsy and heart disease, abandoned by her family, Olivia soon contracted pneumonia.
She was left at the No. 1 social welfare center in Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province. Because of her poor health, she was sent to the Butterfly Children’s Palliative Care Center.
In the past three years, Olivia was declared to be in a critical condition more than 10 times, but Yang never gave up on her. Two weeks ago, Olivia’s gastric tube was removed, and she can finally eat and drink normally.
“I have no grandchildren, and Olivia is like my granddaughter,” Yang said. “I am very, very happy for her.”
The Butterfly Center, founded by retired British nurse Lyn Gould, is China’s first center for children with incurable diseases. Gould, 66, told Xinhua that it had always been her dream to set up such a center in China.
“I saw a movie when I was 8, The Inn of the Sixth Happiness,” she said. “It was about an English woman called Gladys Aylward who came to China in the early part of the 20th century, and started to care for children who had been left by the roadside or had no home.”
Inspired by the movie, Gould came to China when she was 45. “China was a very poor country then. I was scared, but I realized it was somewhere I could really do something.”
With all her savings, Gould returned to China with her husband to set up the center in 2010. She named the center Butterfly, “because the butterfly is a symbol of hope, a symbol of beauty, lightness, freedom and color. Every butterfly is slightly different, and the butterfly goes through many transformations in its life.”
She works with the local welfare center, which sends her children diagnosed as incurable. There are 20 beds in Butterfly. Five foreign nurses and 26 Chinese nurses taking care of the children round the clock. Usually one nurse looks after no more than three children, said Fa Xiaoli who works at the center. Gould works a shift just like the other nurses.
So far they have provided care for 153 children. Many have died in the arms of the nurses, with dignity and surrounded by love.
Yang Yueqing remembers watching Gould holding a toddler during his last moments, saying, “Baby I love you” and kissing him on the forehead, while everyone cried. She cleaned his body, put his favorite toys by his side, and sat with him until staff from the funeral home arrived.
In the center there is a “wall of butterflies,” where each butterfly symbolizes a child. Those resting on the rainbow have left this world, but, like Olivia, nearly half of the children eventually recover.
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