Ten years ago,
43-year-old Shi Yong was diagnosed with adrenocortical carcinoma,
A rare disease diagnosed in 1 in 1 million people,
Sentenced to less than a year,
After seeking medical treatment in China to no avail,
He traveled to the United States for medical treatment.
During 10 years of treatment,
He had 2 surgeries, 5 recurrences and metastases,
4 EDs, 6 cycles of RT,
Currently, nearly 4 years of stable disease,
In another year, he will be able to achieve clinical cure and create his own miracle.
Shi Yonggang is a writer and senior media person,
In July of this year, he wrote “Patients Without Borders”,
not only contains all the stories of his own fight against cancer,
Also a guide to cancer care without borders,
Domestic doctors,
More sees his experience as a “rare disease treatment sample”,
He hopes to use his experience to help more people.
Written by: Zhang Yalan
Editor in charge: Ni Chujiao
A week ago, at 2:30 AM. Shi Yonggang suddenly received a call from a friend who did not know that he was in Houston, USA. I called because I had a friend whose father had rectal cancer and wanted to ask him about treatment.
Shi Yonggang felt apprehensive. Although he had experienced cancer, he did not dare to give advice to others at will. Everyone’s situation is different, and he is afraid of delaying the illness of others, so he can only give a general direction.
Since the book “Patients Without Borders” was published in July this year, Shi Yonggang has successively received dozens of personal Weibo messages and telephone inquiries.
He seemed to be a lifesaver for many desperate cancer patients overnight.
The caller has no other way out, but thinks that since a man who has been judged by a doctor to be less than a year has survived for 10 years, he must have a way.
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Before getting sick, Shi Yonggang was the editor-in-chief of “Phoenix Weekly”
Working late at night is the norm
Ten years ago, Shi Yonggang was diagnosed with adrenocortical carcinoma. An extremely rare cancer. One or two people in a million people will be diagnosed, and it may spread at an early stage, and few people will live more than half a year after diagnosis.
At that time, Shi Yonggang was still the editor-in-chief of “Phoenix Weekly”. During an ordinary medical examination, he learned the bad news.
After being diagnosed with cancer, Shi Yonggang was confused.
He used to be a soldier. He joined the army when he was a teenager. Later, he worked as a news officer in the army in the northwest. He forged and polished people’s will in the military camp. The average person is much stronger.
Even if he started working later, Shi Yonggang insisted on getting up on time at 6 o’clock every day, swimming for 1 hour a day for more than ten years, without bad habits, how could his body be out of shapecondition?
But as the editor-in-chief of the magazine, the boundaries between work and life are blurred. Finding topics, revising, proofreading, and staying up late constitute his normal life. If you catch up with the night before the magazine enters the printing plant, you will even have to stay until 5 am. He was focused on his work and never felt it was a problem.
“It’s like getting on the highway, you can’t stop.” Until, cancer found him.
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January 2013, after surgery in Beijing
Shi Yonggang went to Xishuangbanna to rest for two weeks
After the diagnosis, he soon underwent surgery at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and went for re-examination three months later. The primary lesion was very clean and there was no recurrence. The body and the left psoas major muscle and liver had diffuse metastases, respectively.
Transfer means that the surgical condition has been lost, what is the next step? There was only one drug approved for adrenocortical cancer at the time: mitotane. However, because there is no domestic import, finding medicines once became the biggest problem. Shi Yonggang couldn’t find it in the new and special pharmacy opposite Peking Union Medical College Hospital.
Inquiries from various channels were fruitless. He complained to a friend L who worked in a multinational pharmaceutical company: a drug that has been on the market for 40 years and has passed the patent period, why can’t it be bought in China? So, the country does not approve the import of this medicine?
“Adrenocortical carcinoma is a super rare disease with a cumulative number of 10,000 people diagnosed each year. However, it requires a 24-month application period for mitotane to be listed in China, and the clinical trial will be repeated. , it takes about 5 to 6 years to pass the test. If you enter the medical insurance, it may take longer.” L replied.
In China, even adding all patients’ medication, the cost cannot be recovered. Naturally, no pharmaceutical companies are willing to import. Therefore, rare diseases in China are also called “orphan diseases”, and this life-saving drug is an “orphan drug”. Most patients with rare diseases are like orphans, and they have reached this point in a desperate situation and can only give up.
“In a country with a population of 1.4 billion, there are at least 10 million people with rare diseases. What should we do with these people?” Shi Yonggang was helpless.
Drugs are hard to find, and Shi Yonggang did not give up. He collected information through various channels, joined the patient group, and finally contacted the agent to buy medicines from the underground drug agency.
Within one day, Shi Yonggang followed the constantly changing address of the pharmaceutical agent, roaming back and forth in the streets and alleys of Beijing, and finally bought a bottle of precious life-saving medicine at a high price of 8,000 yuan. Although it’s hard to tell the truth from the fake, you have to eat it to save your life.
He later asked Ding, a former colleague in the United States, to buy mitotane. However, it is inconvenient to buy medicines in the United States without a prescription.
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MD Anderson Cancer Center Exterior
Domestic myrrh, doctors are powerless, if they continue to treat in China, they may not live for 3 months. Shi Yonggang had the idea of going to the United States to see a doctor. Instinct desire drives him to be willing to try anything, even take risks.
“There are only three words in my head: live.”
Shi Yonggang consulted medical agents and friends in New York, and finally chose MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, USA. There are almost all clinical trials of new drugs in the United States, and the latest drugs can be used. Shi Yong just sold a house in Shenzhen, and reluctantly left his one-year-old daughter in China, and went to another country with his wife. He also did not expect that this arduous battle against cancer had been fought for ten years.
At the time, there was no hope for him. “I’m just a desperate patient, a last-ditch patient.”
Going to the US for treatment is a gamble. Not only is the outcome unpredictable, but it also requires a lot of money.
But Shi Yong bet his life a long time ago. In 2000, he resolutely left the army, went to work in a big city, and became a magazine editor. “I was a major at the time, next to a lieutenant colonel, opposite to a colonel. We were table by table, and for the next 10 years, we were just moving around in this room. I was not reconciled.”
Shi Yonggang’s WeChat avatar has always been Che Guevara. The main founder and leader of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces has long become a symbol of the world’s “counterculture”.
He also liked Jobs and was fascinated by the symbols they shared: innovation and rebellion. “They all have their own judgments about things, and have a strong desire to create a new world, and they all did it. I felt that I also created a world of my own and changed myself.”
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The Recreation Area at MD Anderson Cancer Center
But the cost of seeing a doctor in the United States is still higher than Shi Yonggang imagined. Mitotane bought in American pharmacies is dozens of times more expensive than those bought on behalf of domestic companies. Every time I see a doctor, the consultation fee for more than one hour is 600 US dollars, and the blood draw is more than 1,000 US dollars.
Shi Yonggang’s attending physician, Hubble, came from Syria in 1999 to work at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Here, most doctors specialize in only one area of cancer in their lives, so they are also called “super specialists”.
U.S. hospitals implement a first-diagnosis responsibility system. After that, all of Shi Yonggang’s clinical, hospital and department transfers will be triaged by Dr. Hubble, who will participate in Shi Yonggang’s treatment from start to finish.
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Shi Yonggang and American attending physician Hubble
The battle against cancer is an ongoing battle. In the following ten years, he has experienced 2 surgeries, 5 recurrences and metastasis, 4 emergencies, and 6 cycles of radiotherapy.
As a cancer patient, every step is like walking a tightrope, facing life-threatening choices at any time. The doctor will arrange the treatment plan, but the decision still rests with the patient.
Shi Yonggang feels that because Chinese people are relatively taboo and avoid doctors, they lack common sense education about cancer, and many people do not have the ability to study and research. doctor.
He once had a friend whose father had lung cancer, but went to a hospital’s respiratory surgery department for surgery. After the doctor opened the operation, he found that there was nothing he could do and sewed it up. Such cases are numerous.
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August 2019, Yonggang Shi participated in a clinical trial at MD Anderson Cancer Center
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Shi Yonggang carries a notebook with him and will record it at any time
Have questions prepared before seeing a doctor
Maybe it was the media experience that helped him. Shi Yonggang is a “learning patient”. He will collect data through various channels to understand pathology, and he will also visit the doctor every time he sees it. study in a targeted manner. He even became known as “Mr. Anxiety” in the hospital. Every time he went to see a doctor, he would list the problems one by one in a notebook.
It is precisely because of this that he can make judgments and choices for himself at critical moments.
Once, he won a valuable clinical trial, but halfway inspection found that the nodule in the space between his liver and kidney suddenly enlarged, whether to treat this enlarged nodule with radiotherapy or participate in clinical trials test? He faces difficult choices.
This nodule is like a ticking time bomb, which may change little or grow explosively. This is a difficulty that cancer patients often face, making choices among multiple treatments. Shi Yonggang finally decided to withdraw from the clinical trial group for radiotherapy. Facts have proved that this choice is correct.
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In the past 10 years, Shi Yonggang has performed more than 60 enhanced CT, PETCET, and X-rays. The radiation dose accumulated by ordinary CT is equivalent to taking a flight around the world.15,000 times, and Shi Yonggang performed enhanced CT most of the time, and the radiation dose was more than double that of ordinary CT
During most of the treatment, Shi Yonggang had a fighting spirit. He chose to avoid the pain and let the brain forget it automatically. But some memories cannot be erased.
The chemotherapy phase at the end of 2014 was Shi Yonggang’s most painful period. At that time, a total of 6 cycles of chemotherapy were required, each cycle of 44 days, 8 hours of chemotherapy per day.
One day the line was longer. It was 4pm when chemotherapy started. 5. Six liquids of about 6000ml hung all over the room. Shi Yonggang sat in it almost numbly. Those liquids flowed into his body drop by drop, and time passed by one by one.
It was 4:00 a.m. when it ended, and he couldn’t hold back, the vomit poured out, and the whole suit was dirty. Hospitals in the United States do not allow casual occupation of beds. The nurse gave him a hospital gown, and his wife helped him out of the hospital.
Houston often rains in the fall, the streets are already empty, the dark sky looks like a hole has been stabbed, and the torrential rain and hurricane make Shi Yonggang shiver. The wife communicated with the hospital guard and called a car. Half an hour later, the car came.
The car drove slowly, Shi Yonggang was tired, hungry and sleepy. The rust smell of chemotherapy drugs mixed with the sour smell of his vomit, he felt like a rancid fish.
When he got out of the car, he didn’t know if his legs were weak or the ground was slippery. He stumbled and fell into the water. His wife’s phone also fell in. The “car that couldn’t stop on the highway” suddenly ran out of fuel. For a few seconds into the rain, he suddenly didn’t want to stand up, just wanted to lose consciousness completely at that moment. He questioned the meaning of persevering in this way, “I don’t want to be cured.”
It was the only thing he clearly remembered after 8 years.
After starting treatment, “surviving” has long been the only kinetic energy that dragged him forward, and he always used “the car on the highway” to describe that time – unable to stop down.
Unexpectedly, on an ordinary rainy night, people’s last line of defense was broken down.
The wife dragged him up and said nothing. Shi Yonggang didn’t know whether it was rain or tears on his face.
The two went back to sleep and continued treatment the next day. As if nothing had happened, this is the life of a cancer patient.
After going to the United States for treatment, Shi Yong was just able to get his treatment information directly from the doctor. Previously, in China, everyone was very secretive about cancer. In many cases, doctors skipped the patient and communicated directly with the family members, and the family members often “falsely reported the condition” to the patients.
In the context of Chinese culture, a person suffering from cancer is equivalent to a family in distress. The number of family members of cancer patients is far more than cancer patients. This group is under all kinds of pressure silently, but it is often ignored.
In Houston, with very few exceptions, most people are accompanied by family members. Shi Yonggang also observed an interesting phenomenon: when parents are sick, daughters spend more time with their sons and sons are less. When the child is sick, the parents will be dispatched, and even the family will go bankrupt. There is another type, the husband is ill, the wife is accompanied more, the wife is sick, the husband is less, usually come and go around every few months.
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Autumn scene of the community where Shi Yonggang lives in the United States
When a person suffers from cancer, they must withdraw from their former work and life circles, and those who accompany them to see a doctor have little choice. Many successful people accompany their lovers to the United States, and they cut off their normal life and social interaction. They only repeat things such as cooking, accompanying doctors, and comforting each day. They travel to and from the hospital and their residence all day long.
Caring for cancer patients is a hard labor that consumes both body and mind. The patient’s family members have to face not only financial pressure, but also psychological torture. They have no outlet and are in a sub-healthy state for a long time. .
Shi Yonggang knew a couple from Xi’an. The wife accompanies her husband to see a doctor, but her mood fluctuates, often insomnia, in a daze, and crying uncontrollably. Finally got depression, her husband had to take her back to China.
Shi Yonggang was already sensitive and easily anxious, which became more serious after his illness. Even if everything was fine for a while, he would report negative situations. Any headaches and troubles will be magnified by him.
In 2016, Shi Yonggang was waiting for K drug, an experimental drug that has not yet been launched, and it is also his possible life-saving drug. During that year, Shi Yonggang fell into a huge anxiety.
He often throws tantrums at his wife, yelling and even hysterical. “Cancer patients are a collection of all bad emotions such as depression, anger, sadness.” And these bad emotions will be twisted into a heavy iron ball, which only desperately hits the people closest to them.
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Shi Yonggang’s family of three
Before going abroad for medical treatment, Shi Yonggang’s daughter was only 1 year old
My daughter was 4 years old when we met again
Shi Yonggang’s wife is a dance teacher at a dance academy in Beijing. During her time in the United States, she concealed from her parents that she went to the United States to study.
He still remembers that after one chemotherapy, he was paralyzed, unable to lift his head, and almost lost consciousness. The bedroom was on the second floor, and his wife carried him, who weighed 80 kg, from the second floor. , drove to the hospital. In fact, he still can’t remember how his wife did it at that time.
Later, the wife’s school sent an ultimatum that it could no longer accommodate her for vacation. After the two discussed it, Shi Yonggang persuaded her to return to China.
After his wife left, Shi Yong just gradually realized that he only bemoaned his own fate, forgetting that fate is also unfair to his wife. Her contributions are often overlooked and taken for granted.
Chinese people seem to like to group together, and cancer patients in foreign countries also have “organizations”.
In Houston, Shi Yonggang lives in a community called 8181, because it is only 2 miles away from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, where there are many Chinese who come to see a doctor, Shi Yonggang said It is called “Chinese Cancer Patient Village”.
The community is very large, with more than 500 rooms, two swimming pools, and most of the houses are three-story and wooden.
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8181 community with many Chinese patients
Shi Yonggang calls it “Chinese Cancer Patient Village” in his book
Life in therapy is full of repetition and loneliness. Shi Yonggang still swims for an hour every day and takes a nap at noon. As a writer, he used to live without books and creation, but now, he seems to want to stay away from his original life.
The books he brought have never been opened, and he even rejects books stacked in the corners. For a whole year, he would often lie in bed in a daze, questioning all the meaning of his work.
“The ‘honor’ my work has brought me is a disease. I used to work overtime all night, proofreading, and Chang’an Avenue at 4 am. What does it have to do with me?”
Most of the time, Shi Yonggang spends his time in the teahouse next to the swimming pool. Besides going to the hospital regularly, he is always with Pharaoh. Pharaoh was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer in 2010 and came to the United States for treatment in 2012. The two talk speculatively and are often together.
Each morning after breakfast, the two bring a pot of tea to chat. Occasionally other patients walked by and stopped to join the discussion.
What everyone discusses the most is their own medical records. This is a distribution center for various information. You can talk about health recipes, drug purchase channels, or previous life and work experience. Everything in the past can be Take it for a joke. The only serious issue is medical treatment.
▲In the “Chinese Cancer Patient Village”, patients often get together
They are spending Christmas together
▲Patients meet by the pool
One day, Pharaoh suggested to Shi Yonggang that we could set up a group called “Houston Chinese Teahouse”. Many people who just came to the United States to see a doctor would join the group and go straight to the swimming pool to find themselves. Satisfied with the desired information.
Everyone carries the label of “cancer patient”. The former position and identity are no longer the social currency to know and communicate with each other, but the tumor that grows in the body.
However, where the crowd gathers, there is a story. “Everyone just likes to brag, look back on the glorious history, and look forward to a bright future.” Everyone can still find a way to make themselves happy.
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Patient President Wang’s self-made blood form to monitor physical data
For example, Mr. Wang is an executive and engineer of a listed company. He is a well-informed elite in everyone’s eyes, and a rare person who can speak English among patients.
He also showed the rigor and self-research ability of an engineer in the treatment of diseases. Mr. Wang has made two tables, a blood curve table and a CT examination comparison table. He can detect whether he has drug resistance and relapse in advance through changes in data.
Every day, Mr. Wang sits by the pool and helps patients who have just finished examinations or new arrivals to “see a doctor”.
Sometimes I help translate the English letter written by the doctor, and sometimes I help others to interpret the examination report. He sat there, holding the medical record in his hand, and the person next to him would pour him tea. Shi Yonggang felt that President Wang enjoyed it very much, “He has regained his sense of dignity.”
In the Cancer Village, people often organize some activities, go to nearby outings or hold some gatherings. As time goes by, everyone gets closer.
Later, as people in the group died, the group owner gradually deleted them from the group. Some familiar faces were never seen again. Going to the pool the next day, the living people were silent, everyone knew it, and they didn’t say much. It just felt weird. Later, Shi Yonggang didn’t go there often.
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Large group photo of patients, many of whom have passed away
In the “8181 Chinese Cancer Patient Village”, there are people from all walks of life, in addition to elites and corporate executives, there are also many ordinary people from ordinary families. Most of the people here have experience selling houses.
In Shi Yonggang’s eyes, everyone is desperate, and coming here seems to be looking for hope, but in fact it has a kind of “punishment” – the treatment process will only make people feel physically and mentally. tormented.
He still remembers a 20-year-old Guangxi boy with advanced lung cancer whose mother took him to the United States to see a doctor. He is the only son in the family, and although his family background is average, he is still unwilling to give up. Guangxi’s housing prices are not high, they sold the only house in the family and went to the United States.
The boy’s mother, a rural woman who does not speak English, came to the United States through an agency.
Cancer patient villages have formed a mutual aid group, and those who have a car will rush to help when there is an emergency. There was always a feeling of sympathy among the patients, and everyone took turns helping the boy for a long time.
But in the United States to see a doctor, you cannot default on medical bills, so you need to deposit money into your account in advance. By the end of the day, they had no money to continue treatment, and the boy eventually died in a rented house in the United States.
The last time Shi Yonggang saw the boy’s mother, he found that she had turned white in a few days. “The waist seems to be bent to the ground,” Shi Yonggang didn’t even dare to look at her. At that time, the mother had no money to buy a plane ticket to return home. In the end, everyone put together some money, bought a ticket for her, and sent her to the airport.
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In 2014, Shi Yonggang and two patients went hiking in Houston Country Park
However, at 8181, it’s not all about life and death.
For a while, Shi Yonggang and Pharaoh fell in love with “Touch the Prize”. The fun of the patients is to go shopping with their family members or go to the supermarket to buy groceries. At that time, they would sneak off to buy lottery tickets with two dollars in change. It’s like a pastime to pass the time.
For them, the chance of getting sick is comparable to winning the lottery, so they might as well buy a lottery ticket and try their luck.
After buying a lottery ticket, two men over 40 years old and terminally ill will stand on the street where people come and go: how to spend if they win 1 million. Lao Wang wants to build a Chinese patient reception center, with a teahouse and a chess and card room. Shi Yonggang wanted to build a super canteen with a variety of Chinese delicacies.
As a result, luck didn’t seem so good. Lao Wang won 20 yuan, and Shi Yonggang only won 5 yuan.
“But at that time, people seemed to let go of everything, returned to the heart of a child, and became very simple.” Even now, Shi Yonggang said that the joy of “touching the prize” at that time is still Squinting and laughing.
Only, Pharaoh is no longer there. Shi Yonggang regretted that the two were together every day, but they didn’t even have a photo together.
Five years ago, someone persuaded Shi Yonggang that such an ups and downs of anti-cancer story could be written into a book. But he had no interest.
“Who reads it? I am a lost road ahead, uncertain of my life and death. I am a loser. Does what the loser writes make sense?”
▲In 1995, Shi Yonggang (first from the left) took a group photo with his comrades in Jiayuguan
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In 1993, a landslide occurred somewhere in Gansu and the train was interrupted
Shi Yonggang (first from the left) writes a press release on the train
He doesn’t want to remember anymore – writing was his greatest passion. When he was in the army, Shi Yonggang was a well-known literary youth in the army, writing every day. He has published many poems and essays in newspapers and magazines, as well as several books: “Looking to the Northwest”, “The Last Cavalry”, etc. This book has also been adapted into a TV series.
At that time, he had a literary dream, and his creation was based on his own personality and taste, without any special reason, but let the words flow naturally from the body. Shi Yonggang once shouted a slogan in his heart, “Writing news is to survive, and writing poetry is to save oneself.”
“I was silly and naive at the time, I thought I was good, but now I think it’s funny, but I miss it very much.”
Unexpectedly, the teenager who shouted “write poetry to save himself” has already become a lost middle-aged man who fights with illness every day. Literature once brought him joy and comfort, but now he just feels useless.
The cancer patient seems to have become his inseparable label and identity. As Sangerta wrote in “Metaphors of Disease”, “Cancer is not only a biological disease, but a vast, social and political disease, a disease full of punishment.”
Shi Yonggang also experienced human discrimination and alienation from friends during his illness. Friends who were once considered very close have never been seen since he fell ill, and some people whom he hadn’t had much contact with came to visit from thousands of miles away.
A friend who knew he wanted to write the book warned him that once the book was published, he would forever be labeled a “cancer patient.”
▲Before getting sick, Shi Yonggang liked to travel, he was in Angkor Kiln in Cambodia
But as the treatment progressed, he also began to falter, writing on and off, and then on hold. Two things motivated him to make up his mind to write.
In 2019, after Shi Yonggang received two years of immunotherapy with pembrolizumab (called K drug by patients), most of the nodules on his body were eliminated. After SBRT radiotherapy, he returned to Beijing for a three-dose booster treatment with K drug.
Because Shi Yonggang is the only tumor patient encountered by domestic doctors who has received K medicine for two years, and has undergone surgery, mitotane drug treatment, chemotherapy, immunotherapy, Various methods such as radiotherapy, the doctor felt that Shi Yonggang’s experience can be used as a reference for other patients with adrenocortical cancer, and hoped to make a copy of his medical records.
That was also the first time Shi Yonggang discovered that perhaps his own experience could help others.
A month later, Shi Yonggang received a call from a Guangxi patient who was only 18 years old. He was suffering from adrenal cortical carcinoma, which had undergone liver and lung metastases and lost the operation. indication. The doctor gave Shi Yonggang’s phone number.
Shi Yonggang has experience, and he made a detailed list to the other party about the methods of treatment in the United States and the required expenses. But two weeks later, the other party lost contact. Two weeks later, the boy’s mother called and said that when Shi Yonggang called the next week, he had been in a coma and entered the ICU, and died a few days later.
For Shi Yonggang, it was the first time he came into contact with someone with the same disease as himself. A person with a name, a place of origin, a specific, living person. In addition to himself, Shi Yonggang has a more personal understanding of the people behind the disease.
“He’s gone right before my eyes. I wouldn’t be sad if I didn’t know about it.”
This stranger who had never met left a strong impression on Shi Yonggang. Later, every time he thought about it, he felt regretful. If he could have known him earlier, his own treatment experience Can be known sooner. Maybe the result will be different. Maybe he got a good job or even got married? Shi Yonggang often thinks this way.
The boy’s cell phone number was stored in Shi Yonggang’s cell phone for a long time before it was deleted.
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There was a period of time before the illness, Shi Yonggang was very stressed
I will drive to the suburbs to have a daze and drink tea with my friends
This is how he unpacks
After this incident, Shi Yonggang felt that he had to write down his treatment experience. Although everyone’s situation is different, the course of treatment can be a guide.
He went to the doctor to copy all the electronic medical records, and resumed the writing state of more than ten years ago. Every medical record, CT film, and prescription is like a key, helping him travel back to the situation at that time. But he felt as if he was writing another person’s story, when the painful feelings seemed to be forgotten by the brain.
In the book, he also touches on the emotions that have been poured down from head to toe. He doesn’t want to do literary narratives, and he doesn’t want to write poems or novels anymore. He wants to turn to non-fiction writing. “Readers better feel that I’m writing about others, and it’s pointless to tell pain. I hope everyone really gains.”
From 2019 to the present, Shi Yonggang has not received any further treatment, and has not used any medicine, and his condition is stable. Clinical cure can be achieved in another year.
He will review again in November. Before each review, “Mr. Anxiety” would go online to pick up all the information about adrenocortical cancer, including the latest research results and new drugs. It also predicts different situations and writes down different responses. This is his strength shot.
But now, the “car” that has been stuck on the highway seems to be slowing down. He has learned to console himself, to be at peace and not overly anxious.
I asked him what he wanted to do after returning home, and he said he wanted to eat a bowl of Lanzhou ramen. Treating a disease in a foreign country is just missing the stutter.
Recently, he has a new goal: to write a medical book. “Do your best and help others.”