At 11 o'clock in the morning yesterday, the rare winter sunshine streamed into the ward. In the Neurosurgery Department of Yongchuan Hospital Affiliated to Chongqing Medical University, on bed No. 16, Xiao Peiran, who had just woken up from a coma two days ago, had both eyes surrounded by blue and purple bruises. The entire forehead was also bruised, with slightly swollen eyes. The little finger pointed to the left side of the head, continuously crying out in pain. Since the night of the Spring Festival Eve, the child's parents and grandmother have been treating the hospital as their home, taking care of him every day.
The reason why Xiao Peiran was hospitalized stemmed from an accident involving fireworks on the night of the Spring Festival Eve. "The child was setting off firecrackers beside the septic tank downstairs when it exploded, causing skull and frontal bone fractures, as well as intracranial bleeding." Li Mingqing touched her son's small face regretfully: "He woke up from the coma on the 26th. I will never let him touch firecrackers again!"
On the night of the Spring Festival Eve at around 10 o'clock, the night sky was already lit up by colorful fireworks. "Mom, I want to play too!" Three-year-old Li Peiran from Building 22 of the Zhongshan Road Anju Project in Yongchuan District looked up, pulling his mother Li Mingqing's clothes and walked towards the door. Unable to refuse her son's enthusiasm, Li Mingqing picked up a super-miniature firework and went downstairs with her son and her ten-year-old niece, Li Huaxiang, to set off fireworks.
"Little one, come over here, it's wider!" Li Mingqing chose a preferred spot for neighbors to set off fireworks - on top of a septic tank covered by more than ten precast slabs. Only her niece stood outside the septic tank. Each person held a firework, "Shh...shh..." The three swung their arms, drawing beautiful arcs in the sky, illuminating her son's innocent smile.
"Bang..." When the firework was halfway through, Li Mingqing only felt a loud explosion next to her ear, dizziness, and she fell down. When she opened her eyes, she had already fallen into a septic tank about three meters deep. "It was still good that my foot stepped on a broken precast slab, otherwise, I would have lost my life."
As soon as she regained consciousness, she thought of her son! "Little one, where are you?" She used all her strength and shouted loudly several times. Her son then surfaced. She endured the nausea and moved her body forcefully, pulling her son close. "The child's eyes were closed, no matter how I called, there was no response."
At this time, Li Huaxiang had already run home and was frantically knocking on the door, "My brother disappeared!" Li Bo, who was playing cards, immediately rushed downstairs upon hearing that his son was in trouble, followed closely by his mother-in-law, Dai Renshu. "When I arrived downstairs, my wife had already pulled the child onto the ground, while she was still inside the septic tank."
Pinching the philtrum, pressing the chest, calling out the name... Li Bo tried all methods, but the son still didn't respond. He picked up the child and ran madly towards the road to take a taxi to the hospital, "Wearing slippers slowed me down, so I threw them away and ran barefoot!"
After being unconscious for three days and three nights, the mother sang "Healthy Song" hoping to wake him up.
Around 11 o'clock that night, Li Bo took his son to Chongqing Medical University Affiliated Yongchuan Hospital. "Just as we entered the outpatient hall, the child finally coughed twice." At this point, Li Bo's heart finally relaxed a bit, watching his son being pushed into the emergency room, he could only anxiously wait.
Subsequently, Xiao Peiran was sent to the Neurosurgery Department for treatment but remained unconscious. Electrocardiogram and oxygen masks, the tiny body of the three-year-old child was surrounded by various monitoring instruments. Li Mingqing watched with great pain, "Ranran rarely catches a cold, this is the first time he has suffered like this."
The unconscious Peiran relied on intravenous fluids for nutrition supply, and Li Mingqing hadn't eaten or drunk anything for those three days. "Look, in just a few days, both mother and son have become thinner!" Seeing her daughter not eating for a whole day, and busy taking care of her grandson, Dai Renshu felt extremely heartbroken.
Li Mingqing could be said to be inseparable from Peiran. "Because of lack of water for a long time, Ranran's lips began to peel, she dipped a cotton swab in water every few minutes to moisten the child's lips." Grandma Dai Renshu recalled, Li Mingqing, besides helping the child moisten his lips, also checked whether the diaper needed to be changed at any time, "She would talk to the child while holding his hand whenever she had free time, sometimes even singing 'Healthy Song' which the child loved most."
Li Bo wasn't idle either. Every day, apart from arranging for his son's medical examinations, he was also responsible for three meals a day, "Mingqing usually loves porridge the most, I boil it and send it to the hospital, she scoops it up with a spoon twice and stops eating." Li Bo said that his wife just instructed to bring toiletries to the hospital for her convenience to take care of the child 24 hours a day.
At night, Li Mingqing would put on a coat, sit beside the bed, hold her son's small hand, and eagerly hope for him to open his eyes, "I really wanted to sleep, so I rested for a while leaning forward." Many times, just as she fell asleep, she felt her son's hand move twice, "But when I opened my eyes, it turned out to be my own hallucination."
As if feeling the love in her mother's call, Xiao Peiran opened his eyes on the 26th, but the first thing he said broke the family's heart, "He just kept shouting in pain." Li Mingqing remembered clearly, in recent days, what her son said the most was the word "pain."
"A few days ago, the child's eyes were even more swollen, unable to open," Li Mingqing carefully protected her son's head, holding him in her arms, treasuring the intimate contact with her son. Yesterday morning, Xiao Peiran finally got rid of a pile of monitoring equipment. After lying flat for many days, he sat up for the first time, leaning on his mother's arm.
Xiao Peiran started eating after waking up, "But the child's appetite has greatly decreased, drinking at most 100 milliliters of milk a day." Grandma recalled.
Even though he had a headache and felt uncomfortable, due to his naturally active nature, Xiao Peiran still played with the orange in his hand, unaware that his parents were worried about his condition, "This morning's CT scan showed that the child had two pieces of bone fragments in his forehead. Regardless of whether surgery is performed or not, there is a possibility of developing epilepsy as a sequela."
"Although the patient has currently escaped life-threatening danger, because there are two broken bones in the forehead, there is a 20%-30% chance of developing epilepsy as a sequela in the future." Doctor Su said that patients can also choose surgical treatment, but it can only slightly reduce the chances of sequelae.
Li Mingqing wiped her tears, worried about the pain her son might have to endure, and also troubled by the high cost of surgery, "His father drives a truck, earning more than 3,000 yuan a month, barely maintaining a living after paying off the mortgage." Li Bo was supposed to go to work yesterday, but in order to take care of his son, he didn't care about being docked pay and took leave from his boss.
News Scene >
"We All Thought It Was an Earthquake"
Yang Boss of the grocery store under Building 22 lives in the basement of Unit 1, Building 6 of Qilong Garden, about 20 meters away from the Anju Project Building 22, "The sound was very loud, people around all came out, and a crack appeared on my window glass."
Safety Reminder >
Choose a Proper Fireworks Spot
Citizens should set off fireworks at designated spots, and it is prohibited to do so within 100 meters of gas (petrol) stations, natural gas wells, storage tanks, distribution stations, liquefied petroleum gas filling stations (including delivery stations), power plants and substations, explosive items warehouses, septic tanks, manholes, sewer outlets and other municipal sanitation facilities and enterprise major hazard source sites.