Cholangiocarcinoma is rarer than hepatocellular carcinoma and so there is little research available concerning it. After the operation my main concern was how much longer I had to live. A Taiwanese article shocked me, what the author wrote was very frightening, according to it, the 3-year survival rate after surgery was only about 5%. This would mean I needed to finish what I wanted to do within 3-5 years. I think work is probably my best therapeutic agent.
I decided to throw myself back into work after the surgery. Five days after I underwent the hepatectomy and the gastric tube was extracted, I half sat up reading my computer, looking at medical reports. On the thirteenth day with my stitches not fully removed, I moved to the ward closest to my office, sitting on the bed and talking about work with colleagues. Sometimes I slipped out of the ward to my office to deal with official
business.
Some people were puzzled that I kept on working. Can a cancer patient still work? I definitely think that a cancer patient must work! But my wife strongly objected to me working. She thought the reason I had cancer was that I had engaged myself to work for decades. I did not agree with her opinion, perhaps it was because I was busy with work that my cancer developed slowly.
In the past six years, I arrived at the office at about 8:15 a.m. everyday. In the morning, I undertook ward rounds and visited patients. In the afternoon, I attended meetings, wrote and revised articles or gave lectures. I usually went home at 8 o’clock in the evening. During this period, my colleagues and I in retrospect, have attained memorable achievements.
--The sixteenth day after my surgery I participated in group discussion about the treatment options for Jiang Weifeng, a young girl who came from a poor mountainous area in Meixian, She had a very large tumor on her face. We successfully removed the tumor weighing 1.5 kg and saved her right eye. This could have been considered a miracle. Four months after her surgery we drove eight hours to her hometown to see and give her school supplies to help her fulfill her dream of going to school.
--Sixty-four days after my surgery I flew to Kedah in Malaysia and visited two Malaysian patients with severe deformities, Hong Xiuhui and Chen Jiaxin. They had been nicknamed 'elephant face’. In May 2006, they were admitted to our hospital. After seven months of treatments, we removed the deformities for these two overseas Chinese youths, which reverberated throughout Southeast Asia, showing a deep friendship among Chinese people.
--In March 2007, our hospital had a patient from Hunan Province called Huang Chuncai with extremely large tumors. After a year we successfully removed the very large 17 kilogram tumor, which was referred to as China’s breakthrough by Reuters and the Associated Press.
--In 2007, the book “Cryosurgery for Cancer”, co-authored by professor Niu Lizhi and me was published by the Shanghai Scientific & Technological Education Publishing House. This was the world’s first cancer cryosurgery monograph.
--In February 2008, our hospital accepted a prestigious professor of Tsinghua University for surgery. I gathered all the doctors to remove his abdominal liposarcoma the total weight of which was five kilograms. The famous Beijing professor praised us saying that we had achieved what nobody in Beijing dared to do.
--In 2010, I wrote a science book, “Nothing But The Truth”, 150,000 words, published by the Guangzhou Press.
--In 2011, I wrote the 980-page English edition of “Modern Cryosurgery for Cancer” as published by the World Scientific Publisher in March 2012.
In the past six years, I have made several visits to Europe, Australia, USA, Canada and Southeast Asian countries and had about fifty various lectures at home and abroad. I've published dozens of papers with the total number of words written over two million.
I don’t mean to show off and recommend all cancer patients work as I do. I just think that working is an important factor for me today in maintaining a ‘non-malignant’ state. Different people have different conditions and requirements. Arranging your own individualism is important. The key is whether your mindset and work can bring you joy.
Because you have cancer, your risk of death is higher than that of an average person. As death can come at any time, all honor, status, wealth, all the fear of embarrassment or failure fade away. Only the most authentic and important causes and contributions will be left behind. We bring nothing with us when we are born and we take nothing with us when we die. The best strategy in life would be to obey the arrangements of destiny. To do the work you like cannot only fight against cancer, but also make contributions to the society, so why not enjoy doing it?
Actually I am not the only one who considers work as an anticancer weapon. The above mentioned Indonesian Minister of Health, Dr. Endang did much more than I did. The following musician was also a workaholic.