Lin Xiaoying, 42, had no idea that the cancer would come so soon.
“I don’t want an operation.”
“It’s going to die anyway.”
“My hard-earned money was used to buy a house, not throw it into a hospital.”
1
An overly sweet bowl of thick soy milk turned her stomach, triggering an unending cough. Lin Xiaoying thought: calculate, all the year round dead tired, go to the hospital to shine on a gastroscope — always do not eat on time, perhaps gastric ulcer.
When Lin Xiaoying’s doctor in a fifth-tier city suggested a biopsy, she clearly heard her own heart beat: Biopsy? Could it be?
Examination results showed that a malignant tumor, 4cm long and 3cm wide, was attached to Lin’s lower half of the esophagus.
Over the past three months, Lin has found that all her pants have become looser and looser, which she thought was the result of being overbusy. Without that stomach-churning bowl of soy milk, and with a little more focus on the dream of buying a home, this malignant tumor would relentlessly crawl down and invade the stomach.
China has the highest incidence of esophageal cancer in the world, accounting for more than half of the world’s new cases. The incidence of esophageal cancer remains high in Chaozhou and Shantou in eastern Guangdong province. Even more dismally, the 5-year survival rate for esophageal cancer is only 20.9%, meaning that four out of every five people who develop esophageal cancer will not be able to make it past five years.
“I don’t have an operation. Don’t waste money.” Lin Xiaoying cried. At the age of forty-two, her heart was unwilling, and two words went over and over in her mind: “I am only forty-two years old, why? What did I do wrong, and why?” But her family said the same thing: “Do it, save your life, make more money.”
A week later, Ms. Lin and her family arrived in Guangzhou after a six-hour bumpy bus ride with bags and bags of luggage.
This is her first visit to Guangzhou, and she is curious about everything in a first-tier city. In her first days at the Guangdong Provincial People’s Hospital, Lin xiaoying felt no threat from cancer cells. On those nights, she and her husband took a walk around the hospital, from Zhongshan No.2 Road to Zhongshan No.3 Road, and then back to Zhongshan No.2 Road. The traffic roared past, but her husband always kept silent. Millions of them could only buy houses on the side of the road and be quarreled by cars every day.”
“It’s possible to do a minimally invasive procedure, but she’s still young and it’s more thorough.” The attending doctor advised Lin’s husband.
Forty-two seemed an opportunity, strong and resilient, perhaps to resect the tumor and continue to lead a normal life; Forty-two also seems like a curse, so young, to get cancer.
The husband smoked one cigarette after another in the stairwell, then walked slowly back to the ward to do psychological construction for his wife: “The doctor said that we are very early, minimally invasive can be solved, but our recovery ability is better, the most after the operation, then listen to the doctor’s bar. Lin xiaoying’s tears fell again.
Lin Xiaoying felt very novel about the process of “ivor-Lewis radical resection of esophageal cancer”, especially the word “radical cure”. After she left the hospital, she read her surgical records word by word, trying to reconstruct the whole operation process by combining vague memories.
She repeated several times to visiting relatives and friends: “The doctor put an oxygen mask on me and I fainted when I breathed in! It was a drug. The doctor cut in the middle of my stomach, removed the lower esophagus and the tumor, and then sewed the esophagus and stomach together with a 25mm stapler. Ultrasound knife while cutting hemostasis, although a disposable ultrasound knife requires more than 2000 pieces, but the entire operation I only gave 100ml of blood, so you can see my recovery so fast!”
At that time, Lin Xiaoying’s heart was full of trust in modern medical technology, as well as confidence in themselves.
2
After one week of preparation before surgery and two weeks of recovery after surgery, Lin stayed in the Guangzhou hospital for only 21 days and bumped for another six hours to return to her hometown.
For 21 days, the daily medical expenses ranged from 1,500 yuan to 2,500 yuan, plus an operation worth 20,000 yuan. Not counting the money stuffed into a doctor’s pocket, the 60,000 yuan expenditure was already inescapable.
When they were hospitalized, they rented a short suite near the hospital, with two bedrooms and one living room. The environment was simple, but the rent was very high because of the special location. Even if they stay for a month or two, they still charge a daily fee of 250 yuan per day, or 7,500 yuan per month — less than the monthly rent for a three-bedroom apartment in Zhujiang New Town, CBD.
A suite of one room and one hall near the hospital at a daily rent of 200 yuan (author’s drawing)
Lin Xiaoying did not dare to have the similar idea of “how can other people’s money be so easy to earn”, nor did she understand the so-called class solidification. She only knew that she had to make herself full of positive energy, so that she could have the courage to face this sudden disaster.
Doctors in Guangzhou advised Lin xiaoying to continue receiving radiation and chemotherapy at a local hospital when she returns home. The doctor’s reason was that there was not much difference in the treatment level between the first-tier cities and the fifth-tier cities, and the local treatment could save a lot of money. He told him: “Don’t fight any more, have a good rest, come back for a review every six months, and survive for five years!”
Lin Xiaoying must end the “life for money” way of life.
In her twenties, Lin xiaoying and her husband opened a small workshop of handmade leather shoes, which were sold by themselves. For more than 20 years, she was not sensitive to the pungency of the shoe mills, and she was not a bit defensive about raw materials that contain carcinogens such as benzene, xylene and formaldehyde.
In those years, just at dawn, she pedaled a tricycle full of leather shoes to the morning market to set up a stall, Shouting hard. After lunch, she immersed herself in the workshop, surrounded by a cupboard full of leather, rubber soles and glue, dust bouncing in the sunlight from the skylight until it was covered by night.
Walking home after 11pm on the unlighted road, the couple habitually insinuate themselves that they would wait a few more years, save enough money, and then retire and live a good life.
Although very tired, But Lin Xiaoying always felt that when she went home to sleep, life would not have a trace of entertainment. They gently pushed the door open and turned on the TV, pressing the power button and immediately pressing the “volume -” button on the remote for fear of waking their parents and daughter, who were already asleep.
Lin Xiaoying sleeps in a room with lights on, and her husband has to design shoes when he gets home. Her husband has the ability to design a new style of hand-made leather shoes overnight, but when he returns to the workshop during the day to compare the cost of raw materials and processing costs, he always has to revise three or four times overnight to decide the most economical design drawings.
Lin Xiaoying understands in the heart, the handmade leather shoes that asks price 25 yuan a pair on the ground stall, the price that clinchs a deal may have 10 yuan only. The woman who bought the shoes would complain that the raw materials were not worth ten yuan, and that the couple’s labor was cheap and often ignored.
If there is not one day sick, not one day rain, not one day driven away by chengguan. Based on selling 10 pairs of shoes a day at a guaranteed profit of 15 yuan per pair, Lin and his wife can earn 4,500 yuan a month. However, most of the time, they could only sell three or four pairs of shoes after Shouting for a morning, and were expelled by the chengguan for several days in a month. In order to make small profits and quick sales, and cultivate repeat customers, they had to compromise with the unreasonable price offered by the old woman. When it rains, Lin and his wife are even more anxious.
In their thirties, unable to afford the ever-rising prices of raw materials for making shoes, their artisanal shoe shops had to close. Ms. Lin and her husband, who have this skill as their sole livelihood, have turned to outsourcing some of the vamp sewing they do in large factories, keeping their vamp in their hands all the time except for meals and sleeping.
In a labour-intensive handicraft world, if you want more, you have to work harder. Every penny is hard-won, Lin Xiaoying reluctant to buy a few beautiful clothes, reluctant to go to a trip to the surrounding cities, reluctant to give themselves a repair.
Earning a living, raising her daughter and buying a house were her goals all along.
When her savings account balance exceeded 200,000 yuan, she could have bought a small commercial apartment in Guangzhou, but after her daughter entered high school, her goal became: in a few years, she would help her college-educated daughter buy a house in Guangzhou. But Ms Lin apparently did not realise that the 200,000 yuan she had spent more than two decades working hard to save was not enough for a down-payment on a suburban, second-hand, small-family home in Guangzhou, where house prices are out of control. Poor people can’t keep up with house prices.
The poor dare not get sick. After the operation, Lin xiaoying rested at home. She had to take an imported stomach medicine worth 12.4 yuan before every meal, which made all eating unenjoyable. Wake up naturally at six o ‘clock, drink a small cup of tonic, put the ginseng water simmered overnight into a thermos bottle, and take it out for a walk, costing about 30 yuan; Come home more than nine o ‘clock and have a few breakfasts — she needs small, frequent meals for nutrition, but she’s not eating as much as she used to; After lunch, frowning down a bowl of cancer treatment of Chinese medicine, 50 yuan down; After three o ‘clock in the afternoon, she did not want to eat any more, but she had to continue to eat some nutrition. Before going to bed, drink a cup of hot milk…
You can spend all the money you earned in the first 20 years in one year. Lin Xiaoying is doing it herself.
3
The “good” period was only 15 months.
Since the summer of 2015, Lin Xiaoying’s health has deteriorated sharply. She has been in and out of the hospital for five times. Except for July, she spent half of her time in the hospital, and the longest time was 29 days.
The tricks Lin plays on her are not limited to cancer: ileus, pancreatitis, intestinal adhesion, gallstones, cholecystitis, hepatolithiasis, dengue fever, double pneumonia, and pancreatic pseuds can all be new reasons to torment her.
Because of intestinal adhesion in the hospital bed, she had been continuously pumping pain for a day and a night, three pain-killing needles could not be stopped, vomiting bile several minutes once; I also experienced pain in seconds because pancreatic cysts were unable to feed. Her weight has dropped to 37 kilograms at the height of 160 cm. Paper person is not enough to describe, skin and bones is more appropriate.
As a patient with cancer, Lin had to be screened for tumor markers every time she was admitted to hospital. Fortunately, each examination gave her reassurance that the tumor markers, far from exceeding the safe range, were on the lower side.
“As long as I don’t have a relapse, I can do anything,” she insists. “No matter how painful it is, I will accept treatment.”
At the end of 2015, Lin went to Guangzhou twice to seek medical treatment for pancreatic cysts. The first time, doctors refused to risk surgery because they were too weak; Half a month later, the pain forced Lin Xiaoying to run to Guangzhou again, the attending doctor shook his head: “You are forcing the doctor to liangshan ah!”
She’s just fighting for one last chance at a normal life.
The long line of the window of the long-distance medical insurance every day
The night before the operation, at twelve o ‘clock, Lin xiaoying’s daughter squatted in front of the student dormitory and cried bitterly for half an hour, and then gave her mother send WeChat messages: mom, this day we have suffered too much suffering, but after tomorrow, we will be better!
During the operation, the doctors removed Lin’s gallbladder and drained the pseudocyst of the pancreas. The first step in surgery is to screen for pancreatic cancer, even if multiple previous tumor markers and CT images have not been abnormal.
The doctor’s naked eye did not see a tumor in the pancreas, so fluid was extracted from the cyst for exfoliating cytology. This was repeated three times. The cancer cells, they’re there.
It turned out that the cancer had metastasized to the pancreas and was buried deep in the lining of the pancreatic cyst, so deep that even CT images could not capture it. As for tumor markers, the doctor explained: “Exceeding the standard does not mean that you have cancer, and the possibility of cancer cannot be completely ruled out.”
Cancer cells come back, continue in Lin Xiaoying’s body in the “city”. The doctor called the family to the operating room door, without any modification: “After the operation recovery can do chemotherapy, but there is no meaning, more torture just.”
Pancreatic cancer, known as the “king of cancer”, deteriorates so rapidly that neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy can make it a little less severe, and it remains an insurmountable barrier in the 21st century. Eighty-five percent of patients are found to be at an advanced stage, and fewer than one in five patients can be surgically removed, but the five-year survival rate is no higher than five percent.
For four hours during the operation, Lin’s 68-year-old mother walked around the house, her mouth clenched and shivering, checking repeatedly to see if the phone was out of order. When the phone finally rang, Lin’s sister pretended to be relaxed and told her mother, “The operation was successful. Everything went well.” But a burst of sudden panic let Lin Xiaoying’s mother cried: “bone and flesh linked ah, you tell me, is not transferred?” Sister Lin Xiaoying was shocked at first, then suppressed her tearful denial and said, “No, everything is going well.”
The tragedy had already played dozens of times in the nightmare of Lin Xiaoying’s mother, she calmly asked: “Don’t tell her first, let her finally happy point!” On this point, doctors and families agree.
Under the combined action of weakness and drugs, the three days after the surgery were the three “best” days of sleep Lin had had all year. Only in the middle of it did she wake up and mutter: “Why is the pain still so bad?” Then he was too weak to sleep. Doctors’ routine rounds are still rushed and do not add patience to an extra patient who is dying.
Twelve days after the operation, Lin was barely able to get out of bed and, at her best, managed to walk up and down the ward corridor. High-quality medical resources are scarce, and the beds in every major hospital in Guangzhou are extremely tight. On the 14th day after the operation, Lin Xiaoying was able to move around and all the indicators were relatively normal. The doctor immediately advised her to go home and recuperate.
On the morning of the winter solstice, her husband went away to go through the discharge formalities. Lin Xiaoying lay alone in the hospital bed, hanging up her drip for the last time.
“37 bed”, the mindless nurse as usual shouted the bed number into the ward, handed a piece of A4 paper to Lin Xiaoying, did not feel any wrong, “Well, your discharge summary. Then he turned and walked away.
Lin Xiaoying calmly received the discharge summary, just like two years ago, reading the surgical records, word by word. Her eyes scanned the discharge diagnosis. It read, “Secondary malignant tumor of pancreas.” Her heart seemed to stop suddenly and she did not understand the eight words for several seconds. Her eyes burst into tears and she saw in a blur “palliative chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy”.
On the winter solstice in 2015, Lin Xiaoying’s real “death sentence” was pronounced by a nurse. Her husband and daughter will never forget the hopeless look in Lin xiaoying’s eyes. In the early summer of 2016, after the cancer cells had been active in her body for 30 months, Lin xiaoying left.
She had no house, no savings, no life.
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