On 21st March 2003, it was unusually wet and cold in Guangzhou. Dr. He Weibing, from the Ultrasound Department and I took a train by night. The next morning, we arrived at Guigang City at Guangxi where we took a “Xiali” taxi to Zhu Jiazhen, a town about 30 km away. We were going to see Wang, a young stomach cancer patient.
In early 2000, Wang, then 25 years old, felt slight pain in his stomach. He had not much appetite and lost about 10kg of weight. He went to a local hospital for examinations and was shocked to learn that he had stomach cancer with liver metastasis. The doctor told him that even after treatment, he would have another 6 months to live only. Wang’s sister, a teacher, who was the sole breadwinner of the family could not bear to see that her young brother die at such a young age. A news article in the Yangcheng Daily of February 2002 attracted her attention: A hospital in Guangzhou had treated twenty-eight liver cancer patients by cryosurgical ablation! She immediately brought Wang to our hospital.
Examinations revealed that there were three tumours in Wang’s live; the largest was 6-7 cm length and was close to the hilar and could not be removed by surgery. We performed gastrectomy of a major portion of his stomach, then applied cryosurgical ablation. Radioactive seeds implantation and sustained-release chemotherapeutic drugs were used for the treatment of stomach and hilar lymph nodes metastases
Wang recovered very well after the treatment. After discharge he went home and continued to work as a chicken breeder. At the end of 2002, he came for medical review. There was only one small mass in his liver, which was later found to be scarred tissues.
Wang lives in a two-bedroom brick house. Inside the house are some shabby furniture and a black and white TV set. Behind the house is a small chicken farm with dozens of chicken. Here elder sister lives nearby. Upon learning that we were at Wang’s house, she came over to greet us. We were told that Wang jogged for 2 km every morning; after jogging, he would work in his chicken farm. Sometimes he would go to have a card game in his friend’s house. I did a physical examination on Wang and found no sign of tumour recurrence. It was unusual for a liver cancer patient like him to have survived. We asked him to have periodic reviews and gave him 500Yuan as a love gift. His father requested us to have meal with them but we declined with thanks. Wang sent us to Guigang City happily talking with us all the way. We were glad that it was a fruitful trip.
In fact, the effectiveness of treatment does not necessarily vary proportional to one’s financial position. Wang can be considered as a poor man, however he did not spend much on his treatment and yet he survives. Though we cannot say that he has been cured, it can be considered as a success for a stomach cancer patient with liver metastasis who has managed to survive for few years and is still surviving. The rich may have tons of money but they cannot purchase life with their wealth.
Once I went to an elite hospital outside of China to examine a rich man who was sick. He was over eighty years old and was suffering from a type of cancer with bone metastasis. When walked into his room, I was shocked to see that he had tracheostomy and endotracheal intubation. He had systemic bleeding with a platelet count of 20,000. He was semi-conscious and lapsed into unconsciousness after having a few words with me. I thought he might have lung metastasis but upon examining CT films there was no lung metastasis except for some inflammation. I checked for bone metastasis and just found damage in a few bones only. These would not have caused lung failure. I asked what treatment he was given and was told that they were using the latest and most expensive drugs. I immediately realized that his current condition was not due to cancer but was caused by those new drugs which induced non-infectious pneumonia, a serious side effect. That night when I came back to my hotel room, there were myriad of thoughts in my mind that I could not fall asleep. I got up and wrote a short story entitled “The ‘Poor’ Rich Man”.