‘Daddy understands if you want to go to sleep’: Hong Kong father’s heartbreak after daughter, now 8, left in vegetative state following surgery 4 years ago
- Eddie Chau, who is battling cancer, prepares to say goodbye to daughter four years after she emerged from operation in a vegetative state
- Chau says he found doctor deleted note in medical record stating that his daughter was injected with 500ml mixture of glucose and saline
Eddie Chau entered his daughter’s well-lit room in their home in Ho Man Tin in Hong Kong, taking in the colourful wallpaper covered with zoo animals, the rabbit plush toys and the blue sky mural across the ceiling.
Only eight-year-old Chau Tin-yu was missing.
The child was in the intensive care unit of Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam, after doctors feared that low blood pressure and a slow heartbeat indicated that her heart was failing.
Her 46-year-old father, a former online business owner, said he had begun to accept that his daughter was living out her last days in a vegetative state.
Chau said the family had come to terms with the fact that Tin-yu’s life was “counting down” and that they were prepared for the worst.
The father told the Post about his little girl, who has spent half her life in hospital. He said he and his wife had been living with depression, and that they were also caring for their 10-year-old son, who has autism.