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“Don’t like to ask. Self-esteem is high. Compassion is rampant. Keep your feet on the ground. Cancer.” This is your WeChat personality tag. From the moment you read this, you are no longer the headline “Cancer teacher fired”, just a normal person you can see everywhere. You packed up 30 years of your life and threw it all at me. But you can no longer answer my questions. I just wanted to say, hello, Liu Lingli.
1
“On April 19, 2013, I sent my first message to say hello to the world.”
Liu lingli told me that her first message was just four words: “Wish me success.” What was she preparing, and did she succeed? I don’t know.
All I know is that Liu Lingli was an English teacher in Bowen College of Lanzhou Jiaotong University when she just graduated for a year.
From junior college graduate to university teacher, Liu Lingli walked very hard all the way. Her college entrance examination results are not ideal, re-study for a year, or can only read a junior college. After three years of graduation and working in Guangzhou for some time, she still wants to take the postgraduate entrance exam.
When Liu Lingli was admitted to lanzhou Jiaotong University as a postgraduate student in 2009, her family was very happy. In the eyes of his parents, “I succeeded at the first try. I didn’t think I could get in.” My grandma always said to everyone, “Ting Ting is a graduate student.” With great pride. Tingting is her nickname.
Liu Lingli was 25 when she was admitted to graduate school. My mother recalled that she had worked hard. Every time she came home, she would say that most of her classmates had graduated from college with a good foundation. In contrast, she had lost a lot of things.
In 2012, Liu’s father was diagnosed with bladder cancer. My mother said that Liu Lingli seemed to have grown up all of a sudden. When his father stayed in hospital for a month and his mother stayed with him, Liu went to the medical insurance bureau to get medical insurance and earn money with a tutor. Then she cooked meals and sent them to the hospital every day, “in case we could not eat well”.
In the same year, Liu graduated. She received an offer from New Oriental and was accepted by Bowen College of Lanzhou Jiaotong University. On balance, she chose the latter.
The salary was not high, two or three thousand a month, “but college teachers have a good reputation,” my mother said. To make money, Liu teaches a tutor after school and, as she puts it, “goes for broke” — “riding an electric bike all over Lanzhou”.
Anyway, life seemed to have a new hope. She’s got a boyfriend, too.
In May 2014, two months before liu Turned 30, she wrote on her Micro blog that she was 30. “No career, no family!” “, compared with the students around the sun baby, “It feels like I have never caught up with the child up to now in my life, and I am always much slower than others!”
Grumbling, but it’s on track. Liu’s boyfriend said, “We have bought our house and will get married at the end of the year.” If you ignore her constant low fever and headache — which, of course, no one expected — it’s a red flag.
On July 8, 2014, when Liu celebrated her 30th birthday, her boyfriend accompanied her to the Gansu Provincial People’s Hospital for a check-up before they informed her parents.
Then the doctor said an operation was needed. During the operation, the doctor suddenly said that her tumor was malignant.
At that moment, everyone was forced to smile and hide it, as if things wouldn’t come true if they weren’t said out loud. Liu’s boyfriend said the family called him out with one line: “You should be friends from now on.”
2
Weaving one lie after another, “impetuous”, “package block”, anyway, the medical terminology Liu Lingli also do not understand. In August 2014, her parents took her to a cancer hospital in Beijing.
This time, Liu Lingli finally learned his illness, or her elder sister-in-law said.
“I still don’t have the courage to tell her. She cried to me and said, ‘Mom, you’re a big liar.'” “Said Liu lingli’s mother.
Her mother is very strong. At the outset Liu Lingli’s father gets cancer, the mother decides, the whole family concealed father whole two years. This time, my daughter got cancer and let the cat out of the bag.
Liu Lingli was the youngest in the ward. After surgery to remove both of her ovaries, she wrote, “It took everything away from me and deprived me of motherhood.” Her drug resistance is particularly strong, after chemotherapy, even her toenails are black, can not eat can not drink, the smell of the meal made nausea, “very shallow stomach.”
Liu Lingli grew up in Lanzhou, also has a “Lanzhou” stomach, especially like to eat beef noodles. “Some restaurants near the hospital are really expensive. They cost 28 noodles per serving.” Although the parents said so, but as long as the daughter has a slight appetite, they are very happy, or will go out to buy against the Beijing gale. “Hubbub to scrape, pack hurriedly take back, afraid of face Tuo not delicious.” Even so, Liu Lingli can barely eat a bite or two.
Beds are more expensive, and when the chemotherapy is over, the family leaves the hospital to wait for the next one. At the time, the family of three lived in a hotel not far from the hospital and wanted only a king-size room to save money.
Liu’s mother has been sleeping with her ever since. At first, I was afraid that my daughter would not accept it and commit suicide. Later, I formed a habit. Every time suddenly wake up in the middle of the night, the mother will touch her, touch, to continue to sleep.
After seeing a doctor, parents also pushed Liu Lingli to turn everywhere, the Palace Museum, temple of Heaven, bird’s Nest… “The little nurse also let us go to the Beijing where you buy clothes, the zoo, isn’t it?”
Liu lingli has small feet, size 34. His parents said their daughter likes UGG boots but thinks they are expensive. Once in Beijing shopping mall to see, discount, spend more than 800 to buy. “I bought it in children’s style.” Liu was so happy that she wrote on her weibo account, “Dad bought me shoes!”
She loved the boots more than her parents could have imagined. “I wore it all the way through the summer. It was comfortable.” After her death, Liu’s parents burned some of her daughter’s favorite clothes, but they couldn’t burn the shoes. “With fur”, they washed them and donated them.
3
After half a year of treatment in Beijing, Liu’s condition was well under control. In January 2015, she returned to Lanzhou with her parents.
Shortly after returning to Lanzhou, Liu’s college, Bowen College, sent a “decision to expel him” for “absenteeism”.
“Shameless unit, fire me this cancer patient!” Her emotions are all written in the 15-word post.
She felt puzzled, because before going to Beijing to see a doctor, she had greeted the college and asked them not to schedule classes; Later let her boyfriend help ask for leave; When I finally left Beijing, I did not forget to ask the doctor for leave. “My daughter was thinking that if she got better, she would go back to the college right away.” “Said Liu lingli’s mother.
My name is Liu Lingli
The day the expulsion was sent, the parents remembered, their daughter cried and locked the door. “I suppose she was crying under a big quilt.”
At the time, Liu was undergoing immunotherapy at the hospital. CA125, a tumor marker for ovarian cancer, was then tested and returned to normal. Her face did look better and she was in the mood to start taking selfies. At that time, the neighbors saw her and said “long time no see”, and had no idea that she was going for medical treatment for half a year – because “it doesn’t look like she has cancer”.
“Feel the day back to the past,” boyfriend every three business five accompany Liu Lingli to have dinner, feel her appetite is a lot better. They began to plan, “There’s a new restaurant in Lanzhou. Let’s go eat.”
Liu Lingli’s condition is really good, still have time to see labor law, and mother said that the college has no power to expel her. Later, her mother accompanied her to the Yuzhong County Labor dispute arbitration commission.
There, liu family also saw the director of the personnel department of the college Jiang Xueyun. “Jiang Xueyun looked at my daughter and said,” You don’t look sick, your face is very good.
That was in April 2015. Later the lawsuit was accepted by the Court of Yuzhong County, the judge organized mediation, Liu Lingli did not appear again, because from then on, her state began to decline. The trial was held in June 2015, and she did not attend.
Her cancer has returned.
4
At the time of the operation in Beijing, Liu heard that within five years there was hope that there would be no recurrence. “These five years are critical,” she told her boyfriend. By implication, she had confidence, both in her illness and in her feelings. But how to withstand the roller-coaster ride? How should bear however half an year, did cancer relapse?
In August 2015, Go Away, Mr. Tumor was released, liu Lingli also went to see it. “I almost cried myself to death in the cinema,” he wrote on his weibo account. Surgery again, chemotherapy again. Repeat it again.
The difference is that Liu’s health insurance has been suspended since March 2015.
She asked her mother several times, “If I run out of money, what will you and my father do when they retire?” She worried with the cancer of the father, so when the daughter several times asked, “I spend how much money at home to see a doctor”, Liu Lingli’s mother always prevaricated, “tens of thousands of, hundreds of thousands”, and told her daughter, “do not manage the money, you recuperate the most important”.
Liu Lingli still felt distressed. Since September 2015, she insisted that her parents take her to the wholesale market to purchase goods. She started to set up a street stall and opened a shop on Taobao. “She wanted to solve her parents’ burden, and we wanted to make her happy,” said Liu’s father, who pushed his daughter in a wheelchair to set up a stall in front of a supermarket not far from home every night.
“With cancer, my family’s savings are almost gone,” Liu wrote. “When we are gone, my parents are ruined. How will they live in the future?” She wanted to earn medical expenses by herself. At first, she bought some scarves. Later, some people praised her good eyesight and bought clothes.
My name is Liu Lingli
In fact, the supermarket door is not allowed to set up stalls, Liu lingli’s father said, is no way, can set up the night market too far, can not go.
One night as soon as they put it up, the chengguan came and told them to “collect, collect, collect”. When Liu lingli was sitting in a wheelchair, his parents began to tidy up. The chengguan asked liu why he didn’t move. The fiercely protective mother immediately stopped her, saying, “We’re closing up now, don’t you talk about my daughter! Don’t you talk about my daughter! She’s ill, don’t say so! ‘
Since the illness, mother and daughter’s nerves are actually more fragile than normal people.
Liu lingli’s mother said that before she went out to buy food to push her daughter, afraid of her daughter alone at home accident. Once I met a old lady and asked, “Why are you in a wheelchair so young?”
Liu Lingli did not speak. She began to cry after coming home. The next day, she would not go out to buy vegetables with her mother. “I don’t want to get into a fight with anyone else, but if I ever see that person again, I want to argue with her and say, ‘You’re going to be in wheelchairs when you get old!'” “Said Liu lingli’s mother.
“The gap in my heart is really unacceptable,” Liu wrote on his weibo account.
5
For three months, Liu’s parents took her to Guangzhou for the Spring Festival in 2016, where they heard there was a “good Chinese medicine doctor”.
To make her happy, her mother took her daughter to Hong Kong Disneyland for a day. At that time, Liu Lingli’s energy was not good, because of the tumor oppression, when awake, almost no moment feel comfortable. Her mother bought a small stool for 10 yuan. If she was tired, she could sit down and rest anytime.
Liu Lingli’s weight began to drop off again and she couldn’t eat any more. He was only fifty pounds thin. She also joked on Her weibo account, “How beautiful it would be if I had been so thin before if I had lost the minimum amount of weight!”
Liu has joined a group of people from all over the world suffering from different types of cancer. They encourage each other and share with each other. But it’s also a vulnerable group, and every other day there are people who never speak again, even though the name of the group is “We are Together for a hundred years.”
Liu Linli once chatted with a fellow patient and said, “If I had an ostomy, I would definitely die.” ‘he added,’ I would rather die than do that. ‘
In April 2016, Liu Lingli suffered intestinal obstruction, but was pushed to the operating room.
Her mother said, “I will die without the operation. What do you think I should do?” Finally, he had a small intestinal fistula. From then on, in her words, she “carried a muck bag”. After Liu Lingli woke up, his first words were to ask his mother, “Mom, did you give me an colostomy?” At the time, her mother tearfully said, “Can you not ask this question?” She described her daughter’s eyes, looking at her, as “begging.”
Colostomy hit Liu Lingli very hard. In the group of patients, she also spoke less. A group of friends said that she felt Liu lingli was “very optimistic and positive energy”, because she always encouraged her and was good at chatting, but then “the whole person collapsed. Not at all. It’s no use trying to persuade.
After the colostomy, an opening was made in Liu’s abdomen, from where the excrement came out. She says to her mother, “Mom, it stinks.” Her mother, on the verge of tears at the pungent smell, pretended to wonder, “What is your nose? I don’t smell anything!” She tells her boyfriend, “I’m glad you’re not here, or you hate me even more.”
The daughter’s feeling, in fact, the father felt the most, because he is also an ostomy patient. “Ostomy hits people too hard. I don’t even dare to drink much water. You don’t know when to ‘turn it on’. A chassis is 50 yuan, we ordinary people can not afford to change.”
Then her father became more and more silent, feeling his own pain and digesting his daughter’s share.
6
After Liu left, her parents began to learn to read her daughter’s micro blog. Then I learned that there were parts of my daughter that she had never shared with them.
At the time of her impending death, she would not have written, “Death is not terrible, but the process of dying.”
She also deleted her photos from her parents’ cell phones. “Maybe she did it at night while I was napping. Afraid I am sad. She said, mother you must not think of me, you must live, live for me.” Eventually, her mother said, she wanted to take a picture of her daughter, but she wouldn’t let her. If she touches her daughter’s phone, she gets angry.
What was her mood when the pictures were deleted?
She also made two wishes, the first is not to rescue, the second is to donate the cornea out. “We cancer patients don’t get it anywhere else, but corneas do.” “She told her mother. The whole family discussed and agreed.
On August 14, Liu Lingli walked very fast. She first took her mother’s hand and said, “Mom, I’m cold,” then “Mom, I hurt,” and shrank into a ball. Finally the nurse and doctor laid her down and she stopped breathing. “Too sudden, corneas were not donated to her, too bad.”
Faced with her other choices, I was puzzled. After she was expelled from the college in January 2015, her health insurance stopped. But she could have bought her own health insurance, and although targeted drugs and imported drugs could not be reimbursed, many of them could. But she didn’t. I don’t understand.
Liu’s mother bought a “basic medical insurance for residents” in the community, paying only 100 yuan, but “I can buy it this year, but I can only use it next year”, and there is an upper limit for reimbursement. Bought in 2015, Liu Lingli reimbursed at the beginning of 2016, and soon reached the ceiling of 30,000 yuan. Then he started paying out of his own pocket.
Then a friend of hers sent me a chat record, and I understood. “I haven’t finished my lawsuit with my employer and I haven’t quit my job yet,” Liu said in the transcript. “Buying by myself is like admitting I was wrong.”
My name is Liu Lingli
7
In July 2015, Liu wrote on her microblog that her boyfriend’s bar was being renovated and was “asking for the name of the bar.” Some comments suggested that it should be called “love reading”. Because the name of her microblog is “Thoughts to Fight Cancer”.
At the end of the summer after Liu Lingli left, her boyfriend sat in front of me. He must have loved it, so much so that a journalist he didn’t know came up to him and said he wanted to know the full story, so he came. On his left hand he carries a lovers’ watch.
Liu Lingli once wanted to record the story of two people in the micro-blog – blind date, the first is a temporary idea to go to the appointment, the college just held a sports meeting, so she dressed very dirt, the first meal to eat hot pot, she is a Lao, the audience is not cold, chat very happy. The article ended with the words, “In this way, I met the man who accompanies me now — Xiaogang Zi.” That, it seems, is just the beginning. But no more.
She later tweeted, “I don’t know how to write the story.” By then the disease had fallen between them, and they could not see where they were going.
When he can’t comfort you, you can’t care for him. The pain gnaws away at Liu day and night. “Even for a second, I can forget my pain,” she wrote on her micro blog. When complaining becomes the norm, consolation becomes mere water.
He ached, of course, but he stopped there. More than once, she told her boyfriend, “Don’t say you understand, but what if you had this disease?”
Illness alters the course of love. After the relapse, hope faded even further.
At that time, Liu often asked jokingly, “Shall I introduce you to other teachers on blind dates?” He did not know what to answer, can only say, “don’t talk nonsense, you concentrate on recuperation”. When his parents tried to introduce him to someone new, he turned it down for all sorts of reasons.
Her heart was probably bleeding, too. She wrote in her circle of friends, “It’s so hard to hear or see anything about other people getting married”, “I thought you would tell me firmly that you love me, everything I thought”…
I finally remembered to ask him, “By the way, where’s your bar?”
“The bar was only open six months ago and it closed down,” he said with a sheepish smile.
“What’s it called?”
“It was the name she gave it. It’s called daydreaming.”
8
In October 2015, the first-instance court ruled that the college had no legal grounds to expel Liu, and required the college to resume labor relations with her. The Bowen Institute then appealed. And then the second trial. A year and a half had passed, and she had not been able to get an answer.
But in and the institute of litigation, repeated illness, Liu Lingli is not surrounded by the indifference of the bottom line. Although the leaders of the college never went to see her once, the teachers in the same office asked Liu out to dinner several times. They urged her to embroider, cook delicious food and take up a hobby to kill time. The only time I talked about being expelled was when several colleagues told Liu Lingli that the college had dismissed several people because of poor health. Colleagues commented that Liu Lingli, “She is very strong”.
In July, Liu lingli was nearing the end of his life. Her junior high school classmates knew about it and sent a representative to visit her. She was very happy. Two days later, her classmates pooled 30,000 yuan in the WeChat group to bring it to her. But again embarrassed, afraid she won’t accept. A few people think for a long time, finally to the gate of the community, thinking of putting the money there, let the guard to hand over. How dare the guard pick up such a large sum of money, or just at that time Liu Lingli’s mother came downstairs and saw them.
Liu lingli was moved to write: “Pale words can no longer express my inner feelings. Only thanks, gratitude! I’ll be fine! I will try! Love you all!”
Every year on Liu lingli’s birthday, her boyfriend would send her a cake. On July 8 of this year, he created a picture of a girl stepping on a bomb that read, “Fuck off! Mr. Tumor.” Unfortunately, when the cake finally arrived, deformed, Liu lingli also said, unfortunately, “Oh, can’t be baked.”
Until liu lingli left, WeChat also did not stop for a moment, and condolation calls from all over the country kept coming in.
I saw a message that said, “Auntie, uncle, just let me know if you need anything. I’ll do my best. From now on I will be your daughter. It’s from her classmate.
Later, Liu’s ashes were scattered in a tributary of the Yellow River in Qingbaishi township, far from liu’s home. On the seventh day, one of her classmates drove liu’s parents to visit her.
9
In January 2016, liu lingli once posted a WeChat, saying, “after leaving for the whole afternoon, I came back to find my grandfather wearing my jeans. The key point is that the pants are high-waisted with a hip circumference of 26! Isn’t he so slim!” Three “cold sweats” added. The picture shows grandpa eating a chicken leg on the train.
After she fell ill, Liu lingli moved out of her family’s house and lived with her parents in grandpa’s house, because grandpa’s home lived in the elevator room and it was easy to push a wheelchair. She also found little socks and shoes from her grandfather’s house that she had worn as a baby 30 years before.
I went to Liu Lingli’s house for an interview and met her grandfather. The old man was old and hard of hearing, and no one dared to tell him about her. My grandfather has been sitting quietly on the sofa, looking at us strange. We coaxed him into the small room before the interview.
My name is Liu Lingli
At noon that day, Liu lingli’s father went downstairs to pack several bowls of beef noodles. Her parents ate very little, picking and picking at their chopsticks symbolically. There were boxes of milk and big watermelons on the ground.
In an interview, Liu’s father said of his daughter’s love for beauty, “She washes her hair every morning, every morning.” He added that the doctor was not allowed to dye her nails red in the hospital. “She did it secretly a little bit at night and brought that apple water in the morning. And stole it all night.”
“What apple water… That’s called nail polish remover!”
Her mother smiled for the first time. It’s the only time.
Throughout the interview, the mother, who had not even shown a slightly more relaxed expression, laughed and, with a girlish air, scolded her father, “You don’t know anything! Why, I tell you, my family depends on me, and he doesn’t know anything!”
10
The show is coming up, September 24th. The day before, I told liu lingli’s mother WeChat.
She said thank you first, said she and uncle are all right, 10 minutes later sent another: “say a word in heart, I miss my daughter, the heart can not say sad, my daughter’s shadow will not forget, I wash my face every day with tears.
My words of comfort pale. I advised her to go out for a walk.
She sent another: “I don’t want to see anyone or go out. It’s so hard to see a girl my daughter’s age.”
I suddenly understood why the mother’s first words when she saw me were, “How old are you? How many years are you younger than my daughter?”
The other day I replied that I was younger than Liu Lingli, and she rambled on that a young man had come two days before and a reporter from Dragon TV was not big at all. “The judge in the middle court, who is about my daughter’s age, sympathizes with us. I told her that my daughter’s condition was not good and that it was possible to judge her as soon as possible. She said there was a legal process to go through, but added that she would fight for us if she could.”
I didn’t understand her obsession with “age” and why she cared so much about it.
But at this moment, I suddenly realized that no one had called her “mother”, but she could not forget her “treasure”.
Day and night had no meaning for her; As she lay in bed at sunrise and sunset, one woke up and continued to touch her daughter habitually.
Afterword.
A month passed between the interview and the broadcast. The day the show was all finished, I went home and had a hot bath. Water release, very warm, open to the maximum, I squatted down, suddenly sad to their own.
Therefore, as a journalist, please forgive me for my sudden weakness. I dare not try out many questions or ask them for fear of getting disappointed answers.
Goodbye, Liu Lingli.
(This article was broadcast on CCTV’s Today Show on September 24, 2016. Program Title: “The Expelled Cancer Patient”)
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