The remarkable Chinese retiree giving her disabled granddaughter the gift of happiness
- Liu Xuannuo was diagnosed with the degenerative disease ALS as an infant but her grandmother was determined the child would have a full life
A girl in northern China who was not expected to live past childhood has grown into a happy, versatile teenager – thanks in large part to the unstinting care of her grandmother.
Liu Xuannuo was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, when she was 18 months old and her family were told that the child would not survive beyond the age of three, the news app Jinyun News reported on Saturday.
ALS is a progressive disease that affects the motor neurons of the spinal cord and causes paralysis and death. The ALS Association, a US non-profit group, puts the average life expectancy of an ALS patient at about two to five years from the time of diagnosis. However, physicist Stephen Hawking lived with the disease for more than five decades, dying aged 76 last year.
Since the diagnosis, Xuannuo has had stem cell therapy each summer in a hospital in Shenyang, Liaoning province, helping to delay symptoms.
But the treatment in China is experimental and expensive, with each transplant costing anywhere up to 500,000 yuan (US$74,250), according to various online medical advice services.
Told that the disease was incurable, Xuannuo’s grandmother, Zhang Ruixin, volunteered to take over care of the child so the parents could work to pay for medical treatment, the report said.