Residents rising to the COVID-19 challenge

Editor's Note: China Daily puts the spotlight on regular people in Hong Kong, who share their firsthand accounts of their fight with the virus and how they assisted others in need in the city.

When you help others, you are helping yourself

Milk Wong, 43-year-old mother of two boys with autism

My 10-year-old autistic son suddenly walked up to the door. He opened the shoe cupboard, took out his shoes and put them on. I tried to stop him from going out, but I was shoved out of the way.

I had to sit him down and repeatedly explain why he had not been allowed to go out for more than 10 weeks because of the epidemic.

Of course, he couldn't understand. He started to yell, cry and hit himself. I also had to intervene in conflicts between him and my 14-year-old son, who is also autistic and had to take some online classes.

My younger son's screaming and frantic banging on the bedroom door got on his brother's nerves, causing the latter to shout in anger, "Mom, he's bothering me again!"

It isn't easy to look after two autistic children, and the epidemic has exacerbated the problem.

It was just the "new normal" of days in my family, even before all our family members came down with COVID-19 and had to self-isolate at home. Not to mention discovering that I might be the cause of my two sons becoming infected.

In 2016, I founded Little Star, a nonprofit, to help other families with autistic members by holding events and sharing information with them. Since the epidemic broke out, I have been honored to receive requests from many good Samaritans in the community to pass on their donations of anti-epidemic supplies to these families. I've been doing this for the past two years and managed to keep my family and myself safe.

At the height of the epidemic's fifth wave－the worst Hong Kong has experienced so far－I had to go out at least twice a week, usually at weekends, to distribute supplies. My husband stayed home to take care of the children. Sometimes, I had to deliver thousands of anti-epidemic items to hundreds of people in a single day. I had to pack supplies well into the early hours.

I knew that my risk of getting infected with the virus was high. However, I couldn't stop because no one understood the difficulties of those autistic families better than I did.

My family lives in a public housing apartment, and my husband is the sole breadwinner. The prices of fresh foods soared at one stage during the fifth wave, and I had to compare prices for just a bunch of cabbage. Many other families are under greater financial pressure than we are. They have to rely on government benefits as their primary source of income, so they are unable to afford medical and treatment fees. They're desperately in need of anti-epidemic supplies.

The only thing I could do was try my best to protect myself and my family. I had three shots of COVID-19 vaccines and my sons had two. I always wore two masks and disinfected myself when I went out to distribute supplies.

Apparently, that wasn't enough. On March 11, my whole family tested positive after I had made a field trip to deliver supplies. The only good news was that I had emotionally prepared myself for what was coming after seeing many people around me who had come down with the disease.

Quickly regaining my composure, I immediately called each of the 26 people who had come into close contact with me that day and reminded them they had to have a rapid antigen test right away.

After that, I updated my social media page with the news and apologized to those in need for being unable to deliver supplies in the near future.

My husband and I soon started coughing and sniffing, and my sons had fevers. I took stock of the medicine and food at home to prepare for quarantine. I kept telling myself to stay positive because displaying a lousy mood would worsen my children's conditions.

To my surprise, I quickly found myself on the receiving end of the same sort of kindness, with messages of comfort from the very families I had previously helped after I informed them of my situation on social media. Bags of fresh food were quietly left at my door, along with 200 rapid antigen test kits.

When you help others, you are helping yourself.

All members of my family have now recovered. I'm back at the front line, returning the gesture by distributing anti-epidemic supplies.

Milk Wong spoke with Oasis Hu.