Wife passed away on the day she reunited with her husband after 3 years of separation

Nika (30 years old) is from Russia. She met her husband Ouyang (38 years old) in 2018 in China, where both are working in the music industry. They got married in April 2019 and went to Russia in September of that year to visit Nika’s mother. Ouyang returned to China earlier to work, while Nika planned to return to her husband a few months later.

However, Nika’s trip was delayed until this year, after the pandemic broke out and China applied strict control policies. Nika and her husband are finally reunited at the end of October this year in Nanning, after more than three years apart. “We both cried and hugged each other for five minutes. I was very happy, very happy. However, tragedy happened on the way home,” Ouyang said.

Ouyang said that while they were driving on the highway, Nika suddenly had trouble breathing. He drove his wife to a nearby hospital, where doctors diagnosed Nika with cardiac arrest due to a massive pulmonary embolism and said there was “no hope” of recovery. Not giving up, Ouyang drove his wife to a larger hospital in Nanning, about 150 kilometers away. “She was in a coma after the symptoms started to appear. She was speechless,” Ouyang said.

Ouyang said his wife’s health had not been good since she was a child and the embolism appeared when she made a long flight to China. Ouyang then decided to donate Nika’s organs to other patients in need of treatment, when his wife no longer had any hope of living. He said the couple had previously discussed organ donation if someone died earlier and Nika had agreed to donate organs after her death.

Nanning Hospital also asked permission from Nika’s mother in Russia, and Ouyang video chatted with her before the transplant surgery. “I said, ‘Mom, you can scold me, you can blame me.’ But her mother just said it was Nika’s choice. I could really feel that my wife loved me. how much he chose to come to China to reunite with me,” Ouyang said.

Nika’s organs were donated to four people in China. The organ transplant surgeries took place earlier this month in Nanning in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southern China and were successful. Nika’s liver was divided into two parts and given to a teenager with liver failure and an adult with liver cancer. Her kidneys were given to two patients with diabetes. This is believed to be the first organ donation in China by a Russian citizen.

Doctors pay tribute to the organ donor before the transplant. Image: Baidu

Ouyang said Nika is a kind person. “I felt comfortable around her and I learned a lot from her. We were looking forward to the future, telling each other to work hard to live together, whether in Russia or not. China,” Ouyang said.