In the treatment of cancer patients, I am always troubled by the relationship between doctors and patients. We always say that we must treat our patients as our relatives. In reality this is very difficult to achieve. In most cases, it is a “business-like” relationship.
At the end of July 2006, a middle-aged man came to see me together with a professor of philosophy at National Sun Yat-Sen University. The middle-aged man introduced himself as Xiao Fan. His wife surnamed Lu, a professor, had lung cancer for almost a year. The tumor was non-resectable. She had been given a variety of chemotherapy but her condition worsened. Xiao Fan hoped to transfer his wife for treatment in our hospital.
Mr. Xiao looked familiar to me as I always saw him seeing patients in the ward. The doctor in-charge of the ward told me that Mr. Xiao’s wife was a philosopher suffering from non-small cell lung cancer and was undergoing treatment in a hospital in Guangzhou. It was learned that she frequently changed from one hospital to another. In each hospital she was given different chemotherapy without any good result. I thought as a celebrity who was taken ill, many people would care for her and would come with different views. It was better for me not to intervene. So I never took the initiative to greet him.
Mr. Xiao said, “President Xu, I’m sorry. I’ve come to your hospital many times, mainly to follow-up on some of your lung cancer patients, especially Zhou Ling. I could not decide to send my wife here, but it is simply amazing to see how well Zhou Ling has recovered.”
Zhou Ling was a patient from Suzhou in Jiangsu Province. A year ago, while she was having business discussion with a client in Shanghai, she suddenly had a severe headache. She went for examination in a hospital and it was discovered that she had lung cancer with brain metastasis. Several hospitals in Shanghai and Suzhou predicted that she had only one to two months of life left. She was the owner of a medium scale electronic factory. She asked her colleagues to take charge of the factory and came with her sister to our hospital for treatment hurriedly.
The professor from Zhongshan University was full of praise for Professor Lu. Professor Lu Ming, 57 years old, was fondly called Professor Ming-Ming. She was the director of the Institute of Philosophy, University of Hainan, and was a well known language philosopher inChina. She was the editor of the Revelation and Rationalization Magazine, and had made outstanding contributions to the development ofChinamodern philosophy.
I found it hard to decide whether to accept such a well-known personality. When they were leaving, Mr. Xiao gave me a book written by Professor Ming-Ming entitled “Broken Voice”. I asked him to give me 24 hours to decide whether to admit his wife into our hospital.
After reading Professor Ming-Ming’s book, I found that she was a diligent and serious scholar, had great sensibility to beauty. I could not forgive myself for being hesitant in deciding to admit such a noble person of great integrity. Why should I be hesitating even though we might not able to save her life!
Professor Ming-Ming was admitted into our hospital. She was very pale. Her white blood count was 3000 only, low T lymphocytes, severe anemia with wet rales over both lungs. She could not lie flat and was in intense grief. Her only daughter was bonking her back softly and continuously. I had a feeling of helplessness. I invited Mr. Xiao into my office and told him that Professor Ming-Ming had very low resistance due to her poorly-functioning immunity system. Any kind of infection could be life threatening. He asked me what I could do. I told him that we could only give her supportive care and try to improve her immunity.
As expected, on the third day of admission Professor Ming-Ming had a sudden cold and was feverish, but her blood leukocytes were not high. The fourth day, her blood oxygen saturation level dropped to less than 90% with partial carbon dioxide pressure doubled. Wet rales were all over her two lungs. Respiratory failure had occurred. She was rushed to Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease which was most famous for respiratory failure treatment.
A week later while I was attending an academic conference in Harbin, I received a call from Mr. Xiao. He told me that Professor Ming-Ming was in a very critical condition. She understood her own condition and had one request to make, that was to depart from this world in our hospital. I asked why? Mr. Xiao said, “Ming-Ming studies philosophy. Previously, when she was ill, she was only given procedural treatment. It is you who have let her know that philosophy is also needed when it comes to disease treatment.” I understood what she meant by “Philosophy is needed”; it means that when it comes to disease treatment, we must not stick to the dogma but to take a dialectical approach.
On 12th August 2006, Professor Ming-Ming died in our hospital. On 14th August, a memorial service was held in Galaxy Park Cemetery in Guangzhou. Our hospital sent an elegiac couplet to the bereaved family.
I had a guilty conscience; if I had taken the initiative to greet Mr. Xiao when he was visiting patients in our hospital a few months ago and gave him my views in a personalized manner, probably ……