简体中文
"I have plentiful of feelings and warm stories in my heart," Wei Ruihong told Xinhua while lying in her bed surrounded by a small crowd of friends at the civil hospital of Legnano, close to Italy's Milan.
Standing at a height of just 1.1 meters, Wei is unable to walk. "I got moved when I was picked up at the airport and then found a group of kindhearted people waiting for me here," Wei said as she went through the last round of checks before a delicate operation this week to stop the progression of a rare disease.
Wei was born 33 years ago in Handan, Hebei province, with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), a genetic bone disorder more commonly known as brittle bone disease which causes bones to break easily due to low production of collagen.
Doctors estimated that the fragile boby could not survive for more than 10 years, but Wei surprised them.
Though the disease caused Wei's much suffering, leading to her having broken her bones as many as 31 times, she completed junior high school before enrolling in a self-study course and teaching herself at the Beijing University's psychology program.
In 1999, she opened the Ruihong Line to provide free psychological consultations for those in need of help. Later she was recruited as a mental health teacher and also joined a Beijing-based association which safeguards the rights of the some 100,000 patients suffering from severe forms of OI in China.
Wei, nicknamed "Glass Girl" by thousands of people who grew fond of her, passed the Profession Skills Appraisal state examination and obtained the Certification (Grade II) of Qualified Psychologist in 2009.
Wei's lifetime of good works rewarded her when she decided to undergo surgery in the Legnano civil hospital, which is renowned for its avant-garde technologies in the field and has successfully treated another Chinese national last year.
She received 100 yuan (16 U.S. dollars) from each of thousands netizens under the good omen that she will give everyone of them an hour of psychology help when she feels better.
The chain of solidarity launched in the internet finally took Wei to Italy. "The world has kissed my soul with its pain, asking for its return in songs," she said expressing the feelings in her autobiography, Glass Girl with A Crystal Heart, completed last year.
Marco Teli, a Consultant Orthopaedic and Spinal Surgeon, and Fellow of the European Board of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, exchanged himself several mails with his Chinese patient before meeting her in what he defined an "extraordinary cultural experience."
The doctor told Xinhua that he was honored by Wei's confidence.
Italy, which along with France has a strong tradition in the treatment of OI, is the home of prominent figures in the disease's research, cure and rehabilitation.
A solid surgical culture centered on severe body deformity since the 1980s has provided a large variety of solutions in the two European countries even for the most difficult cases, Teli said.
