'I was always angry with him,' says Callejo. 'I wondered why he came to the house so often. I didn't know who he was. I thought, if he was my employer's husband, why didn't they sleep together?

'I slept on a bunk bed with my employer - she was on the upper and I was below, and he was in the next bed. He seemed so strange to me. He ate slowly. When we ate lunch, he was still having breakfast. Every day I saw him and felt uneasy. He would always sleep on the sofa. Every day was like that.'

What Callejo didn't know was that Wong was her employer's older brother, and for almost 20 years had lived with an incurable disease that had ravaged his body and almost driven him to suicide.

Wong was just 17 when he developed a tumour under his right ear. 'My family thought I had TB, and my father searched for various doctors to cure me,' he says. A year later, his condition deteriorated and he was sent to Queen Mary Hospital, where he was diagnosed with bone cancer. 'I felt as if I'd been sentenced to death. I was so scared. I sat on the bed and cried. The nurse wrote me a card to encourage me: 'Don't cry, there are miracles'.'

But when the pain came, his hopes for a miracle faded. Once, during a stay in hospital in 1992, he even contemplated suicide. 'It felt as if worms were biting my bones. Sometimes I had to lie on the bed face up and couldn't move for weeks. It felt so painful. Every day the nurse gave me a sleeping tablet. I saved about 10 of them. I wanted to kill myself. But I had a change of heart. One day, my blood pressure dropped suddenly and the nurses rushed to my bed to assist. I was touched. I thought that if others cared about me so much, why should I give up?'

Gradually, Wong learned to accept his fate, and battled the disease with radiotherapy and other medication. 'I used to ask, 'Why me?' Later, I thought that I must support myself - there must come a day when medicines can cure me.'

He found a job as a pipe-work supervisor. 'Every month, I spent most of my salary on Chinese doctors. Over the years, I've eaten poisonous herbs, worms and even rat meat, but nothing worked.'

He lost his job when his bones became weak and he had to walk with a stick. Staying positive, Wong helped other patients by working as a volunteer in patients' groups, including the self-help group of the Hong Kong Cancer Fund, and helping to establish the Regeneration Warrior Award for brave long-term patients.

But at 38 and still single, he wondered who would look after him when he got old. He still lived with his parents and was too scared to date anyone. Then he went to live with his younger sister, who had taken on a domestic helper from a farming village in the northern Philippines.

Wong had been living in the house for a year before there was any sign of affection. 'One day, my employer's baby had a fever,' says 35-year-old Callejo, 'so I put her to sleep and fell asleep on the sofa. Peter put a blanket over me.' Sometimes, she says, when she was busy, Wong would tell her not to cook. 'I thought that this man was good, why was I angry with him?'

The couple began dating, and he told her he had cancer. 'I didn't mind apart from the fact that I thought I would lose him in two or three years,' Callejo says. 'But I realised I loved him. Why? Because he is a good man. I told my parents, and they said, 'If you love each other, you go ahead'.'

In 1999, she went to work for another employer and every Sunday, instead of going to Central to meet her friends, she went to look after Wong, who had moved back to live with his parents. Wong requires extensive medication and regular hospital checkups, but as a couple they were happy. Then tragedy struck again.

'I was in a cake shop in Wong Tai Sin last February when a woman accidently kicked my leg,' Wong says. 'I fell down, but she ignored me and ran away. The next day I went to hospital with a pain in my leg, and the doctors said my left upper thigh bone was so damaged that they would have to amputate it.'

But Callejo didn't give up on him. 'I was upset the night before his operation. I thought about who would take care of him in the future, his parents were old,' she says, tears in her eyes. 'I asked him: 'Have you considered marrying me after you come out of hospital?' He replied gently, 'Yes, I will think about it'.'

'I was very touched,' says Wong, who now uses a wheelchair. 'Before, when I was in hospital, I saw patients next to me drink the soup brought by their wives. I prayed to God that I could have a partner. God has realised my wish. Theresa has sacrificed so much to care for me.'

Wong left Queen Elizabeth Hospital in May and, a month later, the couple married. They now share a flat in Wong Tai Sin, living simply off social security and savings, but enjoying their lives together, smiling and joking. Wong says God has helped him find happiness, and Callejo says she could never think of losing him. 'Every night, I can't sleep if I wake up and can't find his hand. I need him to embrace me to sleep. Every morning, when I open my eyes and can see him next to me, I am very happy.'