Boy waiting for a heart 待換心的荀荀

The past few days, I've been following the story of a three year old boy who's waiting for a heart donor. He was first diagnosed with a heart condition when he was 10 months old, and his heart suddenly stopped functioning properly two days after this past Christmas. On 6 January, doctors attached an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to him to keep him alive until a heart could be found. His parents started sending mass emails to help find that heart, and it got to the media as well.

No heart has been found yet, and the boy is slipping away as I type. He's no on 2 ECMO machines, and his arms, legs, ears and nose are starting to turn purple from lack of oxygenation. If a heart of a child under 30 kg and is type O or A is not found before Monday, he will probably die.

His parents have been interviewed by the media every day since Tuesday, asking for people's help. I interviewed them three times myself, and every single time, I wanted to cry.

This afternoon, the father told us that his son was taken off one of two sedatives and was slightly responsive to their voice. Between sobs and big gulps of air, he said when he went into the ICU to visit, he saw tears come out of his son's closed eyes, and that he knew his son wanted to live, and called out to people to help them.

It was so sad. I was so sad.

Part of the reason we kept reporting on this was because we wanted to help them find a heart. We hoped that the more exposure we gave them, the greater the chances of someone donating a heart. However, this type of reporting is also quite controversial.

One argument is that we shouldn't commoditize someone else's pain and suffering. Another is that it's unfair to others who need the help of the media, because we're reporting on these people and not them. And the third is that if we help this boy get a heart, we're helping the donor child die. It's difficult, and I want to believe that we're doing good for the boy who is lying in ICU right now. We can't help or please everybody, but we hope to help at least somebody.

這幾天報導三歲需要換心的小男孩"荀荀"
追這條新聞，追得好難過
每次去採訪，自己也眼筐淚水打轉
聽他爸爸邊哽咽邊說，荀荀稍為清醒一點，今天在加護病房裡看到他流眼淚，知道他想要活下去

採訪到好難過
但是我們做這新聞，部份真的是因為希望能幫助他們找到心臟
可是，這樣的採訪，並不是大家都認同的
一個講法是不應該消費人家的悲傷
另一個想法是幫這些人，那別人呢？
還有一個說法是，幫助他們找到心臟來做移植手術繼續活下去，那我們不就是幫助另一個小孩死？

好複雜的問題，好複雜的心情
雖然永遠沒辦法滿足所有的人，但是我希望我們這樣的報導至少能夠幫到一條小生命