Doctor's remedy restores confidence

Operating on scoliosis patients is like driving along a cliff edge on the Qinghai-Xizang Highway every day. If you are careless, you will fall into an abyss. Why he carries on despite the dangerous operations and full schedule has much to do with his father, Liang says.

Liang was born into a coal mining family in Chongqing. His father was injured many times in mining accidents before dying from a brain tumor when Liang was 11.

After his father suffered broken ribs in an accident, the family could not afford his treatment, which resulted in a chest deformity.

"Each night my father was in too much pain to sleep, but I could do nothing," Liang says with tears in his eyes.

Scoliosis sufferers longing for a normal life remind him of his father, who had looked at him with the same eager expression as his patients.

"How can I ignore it?" Liang says.

As a child, he cherished the dream of becoming a doctor, working for people like his poor father.

Graduating from Chengdu Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1986, he has been an orthopedist ever since.

In 2010, a taxi driver in Wuhan, Hubei province, sought Liang's help after suffering from curvature of the spine for 20 years following a bout of myelitis in his teens.

When the 37-year-old was about to have the operation, the general anesthetic failed. A later date had to be fixed. He wept on the operation bed and asked for the operation to be performed with just a local anesthetic.

"He said his mental pain was greater than physical pain even in an operation with a local anesthetic," Liang says.

He eventually had the operation under a general anesthetic.

Because he had a bent spine, the driver tried to avoid his 9-year-old son's schoolmates and insisted on meeting the boy in a lane nearby when collecting him from school. He was concerned the boy's schoolmates would tease him.

"To help patients like him, I would like to carry on and be a surgeon for as long as possible," he says.

As Liang's story spreads, many people have donated for his patients' treatment.

A Chinese American has recently promised to donate $500,000, and $100,000 of this has already found its way into the hospital.

Two former patients have also donated 200,000 yuan ($30,860) each to help needy patients since they were cured.