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Teen survives after attempting suicide to save dad

By Zhang Xin (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-02 14:13

When Chen Jin finished writing her suicide note and picked up two bottles of sleeping pills, she thought only of one thing: Her death would save her father's life.

Gulping down 200 tablets, the 13-year-old girl lay on her bed and closed her eyes.

Two months on, Chen Jin now finds herself deformed and unable to walk. Her beloved father is dead, killed by liver cancer, which the innocent girl hoped her death might cure.

A quiet girl from a poor but close-knit family in Wuxi, Jiangsu province, Chen was devastated when she learned of her father's illness last December. But few expected her to attempt suicide on Jan 23, so that she might donate him her liver.

"It's hard to explain what I was thinking at the time. I had one thing on my mind: to save dad," she told China Daily.

Chun Jianjin, 49, Chen's father, a laid-off factory worker, was diagnosed with liver cancer last December.

Chen Jin found out from a diagnosis report kept in her mother's handbag. She too did not tell anybody that she knew.

Just before the Spring Festival, the teenager had dinner with her family at the hospital and took leave of her parents to return home.

She double-locked the door before switching on the TV and turned on the electric blanket to stay warm in bed.

Her mother had been taking sleeping pills to help fight depression and insomnia. Chen knew from a TV program that an overdose of sleeping pills could be lethal.

She scribbled a few lines by way of a suicide note: "Mum. Sorry, I can't accompany you anymore. Please take my liver to save dad."

Her mother returned the next day at noon to find her daughter unconscious. Lying on the electric blanket for about 18 hours, she was badly burnt as well. Doctors at the Wuxi People's Hospital feel she has made a lucky escape. Chen Jian woke up a good 12 days after she was admitted to the hospital where her father was being treated.

Chen Jianjun died less than a month after his daughter's suicide attempt.

He had been asking to see his daughter, only to be told she had a bad cold. "He was never told about her suicide attempt to save him," says her mother Cui Lan.

Chen Jin lived in ignorance of her father's death for weeks, texting his phone everyday and urging him to bravely battle the cancer. Her mother wrote the replies.

She was transferred to No 3 People's Hospital in Wuxi for skin graft surgery for the burns on her head, buttocks and legs. Following a couple of failed operations on the burns, she is still recovering from the 3 percent deep burn and a damaged nerve on the right leg, which will confine her to the wheelchair for at least half a year.

The headmaster of her school, surnamed Deng, says Chen is a quiet girl who helped with blackboard displays on campus.

Neighbors find Chen an "understanding and polite" girl. They often saw her helping with housework and making porridge for her sick dad. When the family was hard up, trying to raise the money for her father's treatment, she began collecting used plastic bottles and selling them to help.

Lin Guirui, an expert in psychology with the Capital Normal University, says Chen's act is "highly dangerous" as she is too young to understand the weight of life. But Lin says her act is "brave", done out of her deep love for her father.

However, teenagers, who are still at an early stage of their quest for a life journey, tend to have immature thoughts and a limited view of life, particularly when crisis strikes.

"Proper communication and care from adults in the family are vital at this crux, and opening-up to close friends and family members is very important for teenagers to guarantee their mental maturity," she says.

"Dad's gone. Even if I had killed myself that day, my liver couldn't have saved him as he was seriously ill, the doctor told me later," Chen says.

"Given another choice, I would not have tried to kill myself but chosen to stay by his side during his final days.

"I draw, I read and I miss the classroom and my teachers at Qingminghe Middle School, especially my best friend.

"I know I should keep myself well and then mom will be less worried."