In a video clip, Sun is seen sitting next to her husband who is awake in bed. When she starts telling him about the past few years, she bursts into tears.

“Although I’m very tired, I feel all is worthwhile as the family is reunited,” Sun told Dawan News, smiling as she gently touches her husband’s head.

She remembered the shock and pain when he had the sudden cardiac arrest that put him in a vegetative state.

She wept and said it was the thought of her two children that also inspired her to be strong instead and not dispirited.

“I wanted to set a good example for them,” Sun said.

She said that every day over the past decade her thoughts were constantly focused on her husband. Sun spent her time and energy keeping him comfortable while he was unconscious.

The long coma created a series of physical issues, and he needed a tracheotomy to help him breathe and a urinary catheter.

It took hard work and patience to keep him alive, but Sun never wavered in her devotion.

“His eyes opened little by little,” she said.

His 84-year-old father was grateful for the sacrifices Sun made.

“She is my daughter-in-law, but actually she is better than a daughter,” he said, adding: “No one can compare with her.”

The story has touched many people online.

“That is what true love is,” one person said online.

“It’s a great love,” said another.

“He married an angel,” somebody else wrote.

Touching stories of people caring for their seriously ill family members often trend on mainland social media.

In May last year, a wife in eastern China who spent three years caring for her husband wept tears of joy as he emerged from his coma.

In March 2022, a three-year-old boy in the same part of the country stood on a stool to help straighten his father’s tilting head as the man lay unconscious in bed.