I'm no hero, says homeward-bound liver donor
Please don't try to turn me into a hero. That's the message Customs officer Simon Hui Sai-man had for the Hong Kong public yesterday just before he left hospital five days after donating part of his liver to save the life of a dying colleague.
'I'm actually a very average Hong Kong citizen and I don't want the public to make this out to be heroic,' he said at Queen Mary Hospital, where he made the organ donation to critically injured fellow officer Yuen Wai-cheung, 39, on Thursday.
'I will take a rest in the next few days,' he said, repeating his call for more people to consider donating their organs after death.
Hui, 40, who has been advised to rest for two to three months before returning to work, said he had a slight ache and numbness in the area of the wound from the transplant surgery.
He said he would eat simple food according to the doctor's instructions and go jogging once the wound had healed.
Hui was taken by wheelchair to a waiting car for the trip home but was able to stand unaided to board it.
Yuen, who was injured in a fall against a fence on a Tseung Kwan O estate while chasing a suspected cigarette smuggler on October 28, had yesterday shaken off the disorientation and hallucinations that initially led him to believe he was dead.
'Mr Yuen has become much more lucid after a sleep last night. He could tell he was in Queen Mary Hospital and also knew he had been injured... He became calmer and no longer said he had left the world,' Professor Lo Chung-mau, head of the University of Hong Kong's liver transplant team, said.
Yuen had a slight fever, possibly as a result of an infection from a tube in his vein, he said.
The hospital had removed the tube and would increase the dose of antibiotics if needed.
Commissioner of Customs Richard Yuen Ming-fai said the department would decide after Hui had recovered what job he would do.
Thanking medical workers, government officials, his customs colleagues and the general public for their care, Hui said Yuen Wai-cheung looked good when he saw him on Monday and that he believed Yuen would recover soon.
