It is very crucial to distinguish between your needs and wants, and whether you are in a position to afford whatever either your needs or wants are at a given time. That is where Maslow's hierarchy of needs comes into play.
Failure to do the above diligently could culminate in devastating consequences, just as a 24-year-old Chinese man is suffering currently.
Xiao Wang was only 17 years old in 2011 when he opted for selling one of his kidneys to buy iPhone 4 which was then Apple’s flagship smartphone and a status symbol at Xiao Wang’s school in Chengzhou, China, odditycentral.com reported.
The young man was so obsessed with the iPhone at the time that, although he was not financially capable to own one, he reportedly got in touch with some people who specialised in trading organs on the black market.
Reports say they agreed to sell one of his kidneys for 22,000 yuan ($3,200).
The youngster then, was misled into believing that he required only one kidney to survive, so removing one of the two for sale would not cause any problem.
Naïve and obsessed as he was, Wang resorted to an illegal hospital in Chenzou where he went under the knife ‘successfully’. Little did he know it was his life that he had traded for the iPhone 4.
Oriental Daily reported that: “Unfortunately, the operating environment wasn’t sanitized properly, which led to an infection on his wound.
“Worse still, Wang’s family were kept in the dark about his kidney removal operation and only found out about it when the teen couldn’t hide his health problems any longer.”
Because the young man had kept the cause of his health complications secret from his parents for fear of facing their wrath, by the time they got to know of it and took him to a proper hospital for treatment, doctors said the only option for his survival was permanent dialysis which he has been leaving on since.
His parents reportedly managed to track down and sued the middleman and the doctor who performed the operation on their child without their knowledge.
Although no amount of money can sufficiently pay for the lifelong damage caused to his life, Wang’s parents got a 2.2 million yuan ($320,000) compensation which is being used to fund his expensive treatment and purchase of drugs.
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