In the sweltering summer of 2023, as cicadas chirped loudly, an 11-year-old girl began shaking her head at the meat on the dining table. At first, her mother dismissed it as just a phase of picky eating—after all, which child hasn’t fussed over food now and then? It wasn’t until the girl had two unexplained low-grade fevers that subsided on their own, and a faint yellow tinge (like a thin coat of beeswax) quietly spread over her cheeks and the whites of her eyes, that the family finally panicked, urged by relatives and friends to seek medical help.
“We’ll just get some medicine to soothe her spleen and stomach,” they thought as they walked into a local hospital. But the shocking number on the biochemical test report—over 1,000 for transaminases—hit them like a heavy hammer. Worse still, an ultrasound revealed fluid buildup in her abdomen, and her lymph nodes were swollen hard like little beans. “Admit her immediately!” the doctor said urgently.
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On the fifth day of hospitalization, CT and MRI results pointed to a strange term: Wilson’s disease, a rare disorder. The local hospital advised an urgent transfer, and an ambulance rushed the family to Guangzhou. Upon arrival, the girl was immediately sent to the ICU; her mother could only wait outside, clinging to the hope of a brief update from the doctors every dawn.
Five days later, however, Wilson’s disease was ruled out. The girl developed a fever again, her skin turning as yellow as an orange peel. Her liver and spleen became severely enlarged, and her blood counts plummeted. Doctors suspected lymphoma and performed a bone marrow aspiration and lumbar puncture, but no clear diagnosis emerged. Then her ferritin levels spiked, and an even more unfamiliar term landed like a bombshell: “hemophagocytic syndrome.” “We can’t treat this—you need to go to Beijing right away,” the doctor said. Her mother collapsed into a chair. She didn’t even know how to pronounce the disease’s name, yet she had to rush a thousand miles to Beijing?
Doctors in Guangzhou recommended Beijing Jingdu Children’s Hospital, mentioning that President Sun Yuan was a leading expert in this field. She searched online, and parents in patient groups all nodded in agreement: “Trust Director Sun—she won’t let you down.” Though she knew nothing about Beijing, she gritted her teeth and took her child north by train.
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