Couple keeps son alive with homemade machine

Wang Lanqin helps her son breathe as he lies paralyzed from the neck down, at home in Zhejiang province, on Jan 28, 2013. Fu Xuepeng was paralyzed in a traffic accident on March 18, 2006. He cannot breathe on his own. For the first seven months after he got out of the hospital, Fu was being kept alive through a manually operated breathing machine, which his parents used to push air into his lungs 24 hours a day, nonstop. Fu's mother said she has to maintain the pace of the resuscitator at 18 to 20 times a minute. During those seven months, the machine was pressed nearly 5.7 million times by hand. In April 2009, they made an automatic machine to free their hands. The homemade device cost several hundred yuan. Fu's family could not afford to pay for a breathing, which would cost more than 100,000 yuan ($16,069), nor could they afford full-time hospital care. His parents had to bring Fu home after four months at a hospital in Taizhou, Zhejiang province, heavily in debt. [Photo by Pan Kanjun/ Asianewsphoto]