In the noon of 22nd November, 2001 I received an unexpected phone call from a reporter of the "Yangcheng Evening News". He told me about a boy who had a huge neck tumour. The boy came to the newspaper for help after he had been declined treatment by several hospitals in China. The reporter reminded us to read their issue on that afternoon and hoped that we could render help to that boy. The front page of the "Yangcheng Evening News" that afternoon carried a special report about a boy from Huaiji County, Guangdong who had a huge neck tumour just below his chin. His parents had brought him, Chen Zhiming (fondly called “Ming Zai”) to meet the editor of the evening news to relate to him the misfortune that they had had for the past one year.
Ming Zai’s father, 26-year-old Chen Peiwen came from the village Er Du to the east of the town of Tailai, Huaiji District. In 1995, Chen married Huang Jinjuan from the Province of Guangxi. The following year they gave birth to Chen Zhiming. More than a year ago, a small tumour, the size of a ginkgo seed, appeared below his chin. A month later, the tumour became as big as a quail egg. It was neither painful nor itchy. As they were poorly educated and came from a village that was full of superstition, they believed that they must have offended some supernatural beings that brought about the disease. They therefore went to many temples to seek help but to no avail. After a few months, the tumour did not shrink in size; instead it grew to the size of an egg. Realising the seriousness, Chen and his wife brought their son to look for help in Guangzhou. As they were searching for the right hospital to go to, they met an “enthusiastic” couple, who advised them to seek treatment from a “well-known specialist” who practised Chinese medicines whom they related vividly how good that “specialist” was. They went to that so-called “Specialist” who prescribed some herbal preparations to Ming Tsai and charged him 3000Yuan. However, after taking the herbal preparations, the tumour on Ming Zai’s neck grew at a fantastic rate and by the end of two months, it was as big as Ming Zai’s head. By then, Ming Zai’s parents realised that they had been cheated. They went to a big hospital in Guangzhou for help. According to the doctor who examined Ming Zai, it was hemangioma. He recommended surgery to remove it and that would cost fifty to sixty thousand Yuan. Ming Tsai’s parents did not have the financial means to foot the huge medical fee as they had spent all their savings and had owed more than ten thousand Yuan to friends and relatives in seeking treatment to Ming Zai. Upon learning the plight of Ming Zai’s parents on the same afternoon, our medical director and several nurses accompanied by a reporter, Miss Liu, from the Yangcheng Evening News travelled 300km in an ambulance to the town of Huaiji at the western part of Guangdong. They reached there around midnight and brought Ming Zai to our hospital. Upon seeing Ming Zai, we were shocked to find out that the tumour was growing from the front part of his neck.
X-ray and CT scan were performed and biopsy was done. It was found to be teratoma, a malignant cancer originated from embryonic mesoderm tissues. Its occurrence rate is one in a hundred thousand. It can occur in any part of the body but it is very rare for it to grow in the head and even rarer to grow to a size bigger than a head. Because of the tumour Ming Zai was unable to close his mouth, his teeth at the lower jaw became loose and the inter-dental space widened. He could barely open his mouth to about 2 cm wide. He had difficulty in eating and confined himself to eating liquid food such as porridge; it would take him more than an hour to finish half a bowl of porridge. As a result, Ming Zai was malnourished. His body weight had dropped by 8kg to 30kg. He was pale and frail with little facial expression. He stayed indoors all day, reluctant to play and talk. Faced with such a patient, we felt helpless initially and the daily follow-up report by the Yangcheng Evening News was an additional pressure on us. We gathered all our medical specialists to discuss on Ming Zai’s case. We also consulted medical specialists from other hospitals. The general consensus was to perform surgery to remove the tumour. However, it was felt that as the tumour was too large and it had intruded into the entire lower mouth area, if surgery was performed, as much as 3000ml of blood would be lost whereas Ming Zai had only 800ml of blood in him. Furthermore, it would require intubation anaesthesia. Since the tumour was at the neck area just below the chin, it was impossible to incise the trachea; nasal and mouth intubation posed great difficulty, too. Thirdly, since it was a malignant tumour, Ming Zai’s life expectancy was less than 1 year; even if the operation was a success, he would not expect to live for many years, it might not worth doing the difficult operation. Fourthly, it was a sarcoma tumour, which was non-responsive to chemotherapy, and the overall condition of Ming Zai was generally poor and he might be unable to tolerate chemotherapy.
What should we do? We were in hot soup! We remembered what Professor Yang Zhen Ning, a Nobel Prize winner, once said, “If a problem cannot be solved by science, look to philosophy for the answer. Look to God for solution if the problem cannot be solved by philosophy.” Since conventional therapy was inapplicable, then we had to resort to unconventional means. We studied and analyzed the primary and secondary critical factors that affected tumours most. We decided the first thing to do was to stop blood supply to the tumour; this would cut off the supply of nutrients to the tumour so that it would die of “starvation”. On 4th December, Ming Zai was given intervention therapy. Doctors involved in the intervention therapy injected an oil embolic agent and anti-cancer drugs into the blood vessels supplying blood to the tumour; later, an absorbable gelatine sponge and a stainless steel ring were injected into two branches of the external carotid artery to block blood flow. This initial treatment was a success.
After the intervention therapy, Ming Zai experienced severe reactions: high fever, difficulty in breathing, hypoxia, and heart failure. Our medical staffs were in full vigilance and guarded him round the clock. Ming Zai’s condition was stable after 5 days of intensive care. At the same time his tumour softened. On 18th December we started radiotherapy and hyperthermia treatment. Three months later, the tumour shrunk to half its original size. On January 12th, 2002, we started cryoablation on Ming Zai to freeze and eradicate any remaining tumour. Finally, the boy with advanced malignant teratoma was miraculously cured. On 6th November, 2002, the "Yangcheng Evening News" reported on Ming Zai’s recovery with the headline: " Ming Zai becomes a handsome boy." Photographs of Ming Zai were also published. This year, 2010, eight years after his first treatment, Ming Zai who was healed of cancer will complete his primary education and progress to secondary school next year.