I called two newspapers in Daqing, the Daqing Daily and the Daqing Evening News, to find out about Qi Haina. The calls resulted in my decision to go to Daqing to visit Haina.
Haina is a kind lady and has suffered much. When she was single, she loved Chinese literature and listened to poetry recitations over the Daqing Radio every evening. She particularly appreciated poems written by a certain person by the name of Yao Wenliang. After she had been listening to poem recitations for half a year, she could tell from the words in a poem whether it was written by Yao. She wrote to Yao, initially once a week, and gradually one every three days and later everyday. However, she never received a reply from Yao. Finally, she could not bear it any longer. One day she took a bus to the village where Yao lived, about 100 km away. Along the journey, she kept on imaging how Yao looked like, but when she was led to see Yao, she almost collapsed. Tears streamed down from her eyes; it had never crossed her mind that Yao was blind! She rushed into the lady toilet and cried her heart out. A few minutes later, she walked to Yao, hugged him and said, “Yao, let’s get married; I will be your eyes!”
One month later, Haina and Yao married and they set up their family in Daqing. Haina worked in the workers’ union of a company while Yao worked in the Daqing Clinic of Blind.
Their good time was only for a year. One day in 2002, Haina suddenly discovered a tumor on her left upper jaw. She sought advice from several hospitals. Some doctors thought that it was due to her teeth and extracted two of them. Instead of getting better, her condition got worse. Seeing that, Yao sold off their house and brought Haina for treatment in a cancer hospital in Beijing. Kneeling in front of the doctor, Yao cried and said, “She is my eyes, I cannot do without her. I beg you to treat her!”
Haina was admitted into the hospital. She went for a surgery whereby her left maxilla, alveolar and left eye were removed. The postoperative diagnosis was maxillary sarcoma. Haina was given chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Thee months later, the couple returned to Daqing, by then they were impoverished. Upon learning the misfortune of Haina, the local TV station appealed for help. Later, the Blind Association of Daqing helped the couple to set up a blind massage clinic for them to earn a living.
A year later, Haina’s cancer relapsed. Beside recurrence, there were lung, bone and lymph node metastases. In desperation, Haina went for another course of chemotherapy. Three months later, Haina had the misfortune of suffering from another type of cancer – bilateral breast cancer. She underwent a mastectomy. Six months later, again, new tumor was found in her abdomen and a lesion in her brain. Doctors told her that she had repetitive cancer. There were three types of cancer in her including those that recurred and metastasis. There were cancer invasions in eight parts of her body.
Trying to save his wife, Yao secretly advertised in the Daqing Daily offering to sell his kidney, and almost at the same time Haina also advertised in the same newspaper seeking someone to take care of Yao as she would divorce him.
During that period, the couple was very distressed, sad and depressed. Yao became indifferent to phone calls from any doctors or hospitals.
On 9th November 2005, I flew to Beijing and went to Daqing by train on the second day. The weather in Guangzhou in Southern China and that in Daqing in Northern China in November was a big contrast. It was summer in Guangzhou but winter in Daqing with temperature at -10 degree Celsius. The next morning at 6:30 a.m. the train arrived at Daqing Railway Station. I shuddered as the cold air gushed at me. I saw a couple holding each other and walking in my direction a distance away; the man was with a walking stick while the woman was holding a bannerette. I walked quickly toward them and introduced myself.
The man dropped his walking stick, knelt down, held me and said “What a good man you are! You really come all the way. I’m Yao Wenliang. Though I cannot see you, I feel that you are like an angel from heaven.” I could feel his hands trembling and his eyes were wet. The woman, Haina presented me the bannerette and said in tears, “We have nothing to give you except this bannerette as a mark of our gratitude to you!”
I held both of them in my hands and walked out of the train station. We took a taxi to Yao’s house. It was a unit on the second floor of a 4-storey flat. It consisted of one sitting room and two bedrooms. The whole place was neat and tidy. A photo of the young and beautiful Haina was hanging on the wall. There was a desk and an old fashioned radio. Haina said, “This is where our love began. It was through this old radio that I found my better half!” Yao said, “Now, these are our dreams: First, to go to Southern China where the economy is booming. Second, to fly in a plane!” I said, “Good! I came to get you to Guangzhou.”
That afternoon, we went to Harbin by bus. The next day morning, we took a plane to Guangzhou. We were sitting side by side at a three-seated row on the left side of the aircraft. Haina, sitting at the window seat, looked out of the window and described the view she saw to Yao. She was coughing constantly. I asked an air stewardess for a small plastic box and some tissue papers. I helped Haina to wipe away traces of nasal mucus on her face. The air stewardess asked me who they were and I told her that they were a married couple who were living a hard life. The air stewardess walked away and minutes later, another air stewardess came to me and said, “I’m the chief stewardess. I have wanted very much to move you all to the first class seats, but as there are some foreign dignities, we’re sorry that we can’t do it. However, we will give you first class treatment and you can order food and drinks freely.” While saying this, the chief Stewardess’s eyes were welling up with tears.
The plane landed at the Baiyun Airport, Guangzhou at 1.00 p.m. A medical staff came forward and presented Yao and his wife a bouquet of flowers on behalf of the doctors and nurses. Haina was admitted into our hospital and put in a single room. The following day, a donation of 50,000Yuan was raised among the hospital staff. A team of specialists conducted examinations on Haina and held a group consultation. A week later, systematic treatment which included microvascular interventional therapy, local radioactive seeds implantation, and percutaneous cryosurgical ablation began. As the couple was from northern part of China, the dietitians and nurses worked out a menu that suited their taste buds.
A month later, Haina’s condition was stable. Previously she coughed very badly at night but now she hardly coughed. The frequent stomachache that she had previously had also disappeared. During off days, some of our nurses would accompany the couple to visit tourist attraction areas such the Beijing Road, Shangxiajiu Commercial District, Zhongshan Memorial Hall and even went up Mount Baiyun. During the Chinese New Year Eve, I and my wife drove the couple to Shenzhen and had dinner in a restaurant that was famous for Cantonese food. When my wife placed a few chunks of lobster meat into their plates, Yao and Haina were so touched and wept. I comforted them. Yao grasped my hand and asked, “President Xu, this is not a dream, right?”
The emotions of patients play a very important role in the treatment of their sickness. Emotion is a very delicate matter. It is a sensitive internal response to the external world. It is both complex and delicate and can only be felt but very difficult to describe. When a person is sick, he is in an adverse situation. What medical personnel should do is to help him release his anguish, bitterness, pain and worry; to motivate and inspire him so that he can come out of the shadow of the disease. I met a nurse from England some time ago. She had pelvic metastasis of uterine cancer and experienced severe abdominal pain. Her condition improved after treatment but soon the pain intensified. We discovered that she was too much worried with her disease and spoke very little. Later, we learned that she liked to travel. We let a nurse take her shopping in Guangzhou and sight seeing in Shenzhen. Her emotional state of mind improved instantly, and her pain level was reduced by 80%. There was another lady from Spain, a business owner, who suffered from kidney cancer with liver and lung metastases; these made her unable to walk. When she learned that her liver disease had improved by more than 50% after treatment, she immediately went downstairs and asked to go shopping in Beijing Road at Guangzhou’s city centre.