|
NANJING, March 31-- Colorful rooms, toys and imaginative cartoon pictures present a lively atmosphere at the Rainbow Home in Nanjing, capital of eastern China's Jiangsu Province. Children and care givers here fight diseases and face death all the time. Xiao Jing is a one-year-old boy with a variety of serious diseases such as subdural effusion, hydrocephalus and encephalomalacia. Several times a day, he has to struggle against torturous hyperspasmia. Besides giving Xiao Jing routine medication, the hospice staff often holds him in their arms and whisper his name gently, trying to pacify him. "We usually adopt hospice nursing to ease their pain and make them as comfortable as possible because death may approach any time," said Huang Fang, co-founder of Rainbow Home, a non-profit organization established in 2017. Most of the children in the hospice are under the age of 10. Xiao Jing is the youngest. Most of the children at the Rainbow Home have been abandoned by their parents, as they were born with incurable diseases such as heart defects, hydrocephalus and biliary atresia. They have to lie in bed most of the time and take medicine regularly. Huang said when children do not know how to express their pains and fears, they are likely to cry or scream out. "It's not easy to take care of these terminally sick children. Although most volunteers have compassion for the work initially, they are nervous and afraid to stand close to them, not to mention to nurse them," she said. | 
