Teacher to donate kidney to save daughter's life

With 250,000 yuan ($40,000) in donations, Li Guorong, a female teacher in a poor village, went to Tongji Hospital in Wuhan, Hubei province, on Sunday to donate her kidney to save her daughter, who has uremia, Chutian Golden Newspaper reported.

Proud of her role as a teacher, Li decided to stay in the village when she graduated from junior high school in 1982. A teacher for 32 years in Wuchuan county, one of the poorest places in Guizhou province, Li has had more than 3,000 students.

She contracted systemic lupus erythematosus in 1994 and had to borrow money for treatment. The disease left the family indigent, and her husband left her and their daughter because of the heavy debt.

With Li's perseverance in supporting the family, her daughter finally graduated from college and began to work in 2013, but her daughter was soon diagnosed with uremia.

Li was told that her kidney type matches her daughter's, so a kidney transplant would cure her daughter, but the cost would be 250,000 yuan.

Li's situation aroused a great deal of public attention, and netizens soon called on people on the Sina Weibo and Tencent micro-blog websites to donate money to her.

Li also recorded every donor's name on a notebook and said, "I will pass the notebook down from one generation to another, reminding my family to be grateful and help other people in the future".

Li and her daughter arrived at Wuhan by plane on Sunday. When the chief attendant told Li's story to passengers on the plane, people were all willing to donate money to help them overcome difficulties.

During the hourlong flight, passengers donated 2,700 yuan to Li and her daughter. "As people become more and more indifferent to strangers today, Li's story makes me feel the power of kindness," a passenger surnamed Wang said.

Liu Bin, associate professor of organ transplantation department of Tongji Hospital, said the surgeries will be complete in 10 days, and the mother and daughter then will have three months of rehabilitation.