A Sick and Aging Body Cannot Afford Mistreatment

About six or seven years ago, my older male cousin treated my father to a meal at a restaurant in our hometown county town. Restaurants in Hubei cook their dishes very spicy; after that meal, my father developed severe constipation, which then troubled him on and off for many years.

Constipation in the elderly is very difficult to treat. My father first saw some local doctors; each time the relief was only temporary, and a few days later the constipation grew worse, so severe that he sometimes needed hospitalization for enemas. Local Western doctors mostly prescribed lactulose; local TCM doctors mostly prescribed Mahren Wan (Hemp Seed Pill), Fanxieye (senna leaf) and Dahuang (rhubarb) to purge the bowels. After such treatment, my father could almost no longer pass stool at all; because the feces were severely bound up, he became agitated and restless. In his youth he had been an atheist, but constipation that defied prolonged treatment turned my father into a believer; he kept feeling that ghosts and spirits were tormenting him.

I brought my father to live with me. By changing his diet, giving him more laxative fruits and vegetables, urging him to drink more water, supplementing him with vitamins, probiotics and prebiotics, and, as appropriate, prescribing some TCM formulas to soothe the liver and regulate qi to resolve his constipation. Generally, after two or three months of adjustment, his constipation would resolve and he could pass stool normally without medication.

But every time my father had stayed with me for three to five months, he would miss his hometown and fuss about going back. Once home, for the first few months he could still follow the diet plan I had adjusted for him, avoiding spicy and pickled foods. But whenever festivals came around and relatives and friends invited him to meals, he could not control his mouth. After just a few meals of cured fish and cured meat, or a few meals of chili peppers, the constipation was bound to return. Whenever it recurred, my father grew anxious and irritable, and I had to give him comprehensive treatment and conditioning all over again.

With each relapse, my father always complained that I could not cure his constipation once and for all and that it returned so easily. Several times he doubted my medical skill. Out of helplessness, I took him to top hospitals such as Peking Union Medical College Hospital and the Chinese PLA General Hospital (301 Hospital) to see their best gastroenterologists; the results were far worse than when I treated him myself—not because they were less skilled than I, but because they did not know my father's body as I did. When my father saw that the medicines they prescribed were the same ones previous doctors had prescribed, he finally let go of his distrust of his own son.

To be honest, my father's constipation not only tormented him, it also wore me out. My life has few troubles, and my father's health is one of my greatest sources of worry. If only my father would avoid pickled and spicy foods, he could stay well. But he had been accustomed since childhood to cured fish and meat and to chili peppers, and whenever he dined with our relatives he could not avoid such foods. Yet if he did not gather with relatives and friends, he grew lonely in spirit. I always hoped he could control his mouth; a few times I even lost my temper at him, blaming him for lacking self-discipline, for wearing himself out and wearing me out as well.

But my father is already over seventy, and I now clearly feel that his memory is not what it was. Though it has not yet reached the level of dementia, things that happened yesterday are forgotten by today, and things that happened today are not remembered tomorrow. I have read some works on brain science and know that at his age the brain is degenerating, so I cannot truly hold it against him. I can only help him solve his problems again and again, even though it leaves me utterly drained.

My father's situation is not unique. Among my patients there are some who, just like him, keep mistreating themselves, and these patients likewise wear me out. I have finally managed to bring their condition under control—to be honest, controlling a cancer patient's disease is truly no easy task—only for them to mistreat themselves again and again. Either they are addicted to tobacco and alcohol, or they crave spicy, greasy food, or they are fooled by all sorts of people into taking every conceivable bizarre health supplement and drug, using all manner of methods to torment their bodies; once they have worn themselves into a host of ailments, they come to me to solve new problems beyond the cancer.

Sometimes I have to admit that such patients are truly a headache. I always try my best to treat their illnesses in economical ways, yet they seem to be stingy neither with money nor with being drawn in by all sorts of absurd theories. Not only do they waste plenty of money, they also invite new diseases. Sometimes I have to persuade some patients not to study up on all sorts of medical and health-preserving knowledge on their own, not to join various health groups or watch health shows, because they lack the ability to tell right from wrong and are easily poisoned by misinformation.

As Shi Tiesheng put it, in the face of stubborn illness it is hard to remain an atheist. In my hometown, still a great many people believe that incense ash from temples cures every illness; online, many people spread absurd rumors defying common sense, such as claims that someone lived to over two hundred. Even things as counterintuitive as a boiled egg spontaneously hatching out of its shell are earnestly believed by many. How can one praise the cognitive ability of the general public? Over the years I have seen many patients whose disease progressed rapidly precisely because their cognitive and self-control abilities were too poor; they had worn their own bodies into ruin.

We do not know about the long-lived sages of antiquity, but we do know something about long-lived people in modern times. The vast majority of those who live past a hundred follow common sense and practice restraint, rather than believing in all manner of superstitious nonsense or lacking moderation. Even after developing cancer, many people survive for decades, living into their eighties or nineties, and one or two even past a hundred; but these people share a common trait: the cancer reminded them to stop mistreating their bodies, and after falling ill they genuinely did so.

In Nanning there is a breast cancer patient who lived past a hundred. She had been a nurse before, and one thing she said I remember vividly: she was grateful for her cancer. If not for the cancer, she could never have lived so long, because it was the cancer that made her realize how foolish and terrifying her previously undisciplined life had been. The cancer taught her wisdom. If illness cannot wake us up, that is truly a pity.