Parents hand-pumped homemade ventilator for 7 years to keep son alive

For seven years, Fu Xuepeng's parents have sat by his bedside, manually pumping a homemade ventilator thousands of times a day, until their hands became deformed (three minutes without pumped air would kill him). A 2006 motorcycle accident left Fu, 30, paralyzed and unable to breathe on his own. Too poor to afford hospital treatment, his parents, farmers in China's Zhejiang province, built a $30 DIY ventilator following instructions they'd seen on TV. Fu's breathing easier these days: His story went viral and donations poured in. He was hooked up to a $32,000 mechanical ventilator on Wednesday, giving his mom a break. "For the first time in ... years, I slept well last night," she says. [Source]

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