A cancer-stricken student has launched a search for her biological parents for an urgent transplant after discovering she was abandoned as a baby.
Zhou Heyao is battling mixed-phenotype acute leukaemia, a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer.
The 21-year-old is in a serious condition in hospital and urgently needs a bone marrow transplant to survive.
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On 10 January, she signed a critical condition notice due to her unstable vital signs.
While searching for a suitable donor, she realised her mum and dad were not her biological parents.
Zhou, who comes from Guiyang, China, needs to find someone with a close match of human leukocyte antigens (HLA) for the transplant to have a higher rate of success.
Close family members are often the best suited donors for patients requiring a bone marrow transplant.
Zhou, a student at the School of Music of Yangzhou University, learned that she had been abandoned as a baby by her biological mother.
While helping her adoptive father organise some paperwork, she found her adoption certificate and a note from her birth mother, as reported by Need To Know.
She was dumped on her adoptive parents’ doorstep on 9 February 2004.
The note said: “This girl was born in Taiciqiao (located in Guiyang City) on the 19th of 2004.”
In China, the 19th day of the first lunar month of 2004 was 9 February in the Gregorian calendar.
“I hope a kind person will raise and care for her,” the note continued. “That is my wish.
“I am from Sichuan Province and cannot afford to pay for her care back home.
“It is truly heartbreaking, but I have no other choice.
“I hope she grows up strong and independent so I can rest easy.
“I’ll stop writing here. Born at 5.30am.”
Zhou decided to not question her parents about it because “they have been really good to me”.
Zhou’s adoptive mother, Ms. Yao, was 38 years old at the time and had just undergone surgery for an ectopic pregnancy.
She legally adopted the baby and raised her as her own.
After falling ill, her family secretly tried to find her biological parents through DNA matching with the police, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, doctors repeatedly emphasised the need for a close match for the transplant to reduce the risk of rejection.
On 22 January, Zhou launched an appeal to find her biological parents on social media.
She stated that she does not blame them for abandoning her 21 years ago and does not want financial help or recognition.
She just hopes that a close relative could go to the hospital for a bone marrow matching test.
Currently, the family has registered the case with the authorities and posted a missing person notice on online platforms, appealing to people in the Sichuan-Chongqing region to help share it.
Zhou’s story has also been picked up by national media outlets.
As a result, a man from Sichuan contacted Zhou to tell her that he believes he may be her biological father.
He explained that he fell in love with a woman and she soon became pregnant.
When she was five or six months pregnant, she said she wanted to travel to Guizhou, Guiyang’s capital, alone to give birth, and they lost contact afterwards.
He has agreed to cooperate with DNA testing to see if he is indeed Zhou’s father.
Zhou has yet to reveal whether it is a match.
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