Bidding Farewell to 2016 with Gratitude

The year is drawing to a close; it is time to sum up my own year.

My biggest feeling about 2016 is that I was busy, and that I have let my family down.

On Father's Day, my son's homeroom teacher invited me to host a class activity, but I was too busy to go. My son is already in sixth grade, his last year of primary school; before he graduates I hope to attend one of his school activities and thank the teachers who worked so hard to educate him for six years.

I have not watched a movie with my child for three years; each time it is his mother who accompanies him. The frequency of my phone calls to my father has dropped again and again; several times when I was very near my hometown I still could not go back to see him.

The physical and mental pressure I was under reached its limit; my hair began to thin, and I needed to take the mind-calming Ganmai Dazao Decoction (Grain, Wheat and Jujube Decoction) just to sleep six or seven hours a night.

A senior fellow apprentice once told me: in treating cancer you are often not facing one patient but a whole family; sometimes the family's emotional illness is more severe and harder to handle than the patient's physical illness, and you must be extraordinarily strong to work in oncology. Two years after saying this, he himself left oncology, abandoned the medical profession, and went to the border to do business.

The doctor friend who had originally helped arrange my mother's gastrectomy for gastric cancer at the 307 Hospital also left oncology; she said she truly could not bear the despairing atmosphere of the oncology ward and felt she was about to break down. Another friend, a PhD supervisor in dermatology, told me that sometimes even walking into oncology for a consultation, he is oppressed by that despairing atmosphere.

If I still want to achieve something in oncology, I must learn to lighten my load, learn to decline, and learn to say no. My mother died of cancer, and researching oncology is already one of the most important things in my life; I cannot give it up, but I will pace myself better.

Early this morning, I deleted nearly 40% of my WeChat contacts (and will continue clearing some more); I have left or disbanded almost all my QQ and WeChat groups. This is how I bid farewell to 2016.

Because I had already sunk into an ocean of patients, my workload exceeded the maximum I could bear. I must first safeguard my own health before I can escort my patients' health.

Now I often have no time to reply to various medical consultations. Henceforth, for patients I do not personally treat, I will no longer have the energy to provide any free medical advice; and I will not reply to any non-medical chatter or discussions at all. I can only ask for everyone's understanding, because I truly have more to do than I can handle.

In 2017, my greatest wish is to lighten the burden, have more time for reading and playing the qin, more time with my family, and treat those patients who trust me especially more easily and more focusedly, helping them escape the threat of death as much as possible. I believe this is far more valuable than providing a great volume of meaningless online consultations.

This year I resigned from my position as the top administrator of a hospital, and refused cooperation requests from more than thirty hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. To uphold my ideal of practicing medicine with integrity, alone and without hesitation, I have insisted on perfectionism. I have received support from many patients and funding from kind-hearted people; with everyone's help and support, I have finally been able to keep going.

I am grateful to every person, and bear no resentment toward anyone I met this year. Though I clashed with some in outlook, I hold no grudge against anyone. Because this year I have extinguished the mind of anger, and there is no longer any ill feeling in my heart.

Those I have helped need not keep me in mind; those unable to pay consultation fees need not feel bad. When you return for follow-up, I will still treat you as always, with equal patience. Healing the sick is a physician's bounden duty, and aiding those in danger is every citizen's obligation. Helping you gives me inner joy, because you are the ones who truly need help.

Those I have hurt—I ask your forgiveness, and hope you will let go of ill feeling and live more happily.

I know I will eventually become a famous physician, but I did not expect it to happen much faster than I anticipated.

I have forgotten the exact time, more than ten years ago, when I first treated someone for cancer; I only remember that patient was a nurse's mother. At that time my own mother also had cancer, and like her I went everywhere seeking doctors, hoping for a miracle. We exchanged notes and came to know each other. The doctors had basically all refused to provide hospice care for her already-terminal mother, and she asked me for help.

The treatment of her mother was very effective: in little over a week, the bedridden old lady could walk downstairs to take a walk in the sun. After that, the group of cancer patients and families we had first met all asked for my help, and it was usually effective. Gradually my reputation grew, and later I gained a certain influence on Tianya Club and Sina Blog.

Today, the longest-surviving patient I have treated has lived seven or eight years, and another group has survived about five years. Seeing them still alive and well gives me great comfort, even though my mother has left me forever. I never intended to practice medicine formally, but the endless stream of patients finally left me nowhere to retreat.

At the Qingming Festival in 2012, I returned home to be with my mother in her final days. One night just before Qingming, the wind howled and rain raged outside; my grief was at its extreme, because my mother's condition worsened day by day. Having studied medicine for over ten years by then, I knew she had little time left. That night I slept in my bed at home and dreamed that my mother stood by my bed, weeping, saying: "Son, save me!" In the dream I cried aloud; my father came to my room and asked if I had a nightmare. That despair is unforgettable to this day. Whenever a patient's family faces what I once faced, I feel as if I have returned to those days.

On Labor Day 2012, my mother, who had worked hard all her life, left the world forever. She passed away weeping in my arms; at the moment she died, I was so stricken with grief that I went into shock. As I escorted my mother's coffin out for burial, watching my fellow villagers carry the coffin holding my mother, I fell into deep doubt about all meaning in life.

In August 2012, about three months after my loving mother passed away, with the help of my respected mentor Li Lixin, I took another respected teacher as my master and began the journey of studying medicine full-time, obtaining certification, and practicing lawfully.

This was a bitter journey, and it had actually begun long before: more than ten years earlier, when my mother first fell ill from a cerebral hemorrhage and lay unconscious, I had begun rising at three or four o'clock every morning to study medical texts diligently. I had once been a businessman in international trade relying on the IT skills I mastered; in my circle I did fairly well, buying property in Beijing before I was thirty. After my mother fell ill, my career was gradually abandoned; I was completely immersed in medical research, unable to extricate myself.

For my family, this distracted state of mine was a disaster. I lived a displaced life for over ten years, studying medicine with single-minded devotion, all to save my mother and the cancer patients trapped in the same despair she was. After my mother died, my savings were basically spent; life at home was very austere, and for a time I badly wanted to start over and go back to business.

In 2014 I even tried returning to business. While traveling to a place in Hebei looking for suppliers, one day through the car window I saw a crowd carrying a coffin in a funeral procession. Seeing the family members in mourning, tears streamed down my face. That day I decided to give up all struggle: even if, for the rest of my life, I had to survive by picking up garbage near my home, I would walk to the end of the road of medicine.

I have always had many long-term patients following me. I know that the great majority of them, though impoverished by illness and stripped of their lofty social status, are still, for their families, the source of happiness as long as they live; once they are gone, their families, like mine, will never recover the wholeness they once had. My patients need me to hold my post and safeguard their lives.

To avoid ridicule, I cut off socializing: I do not attend class reunions or family and friend dinners, minimizing outside influence, isolating myself in an independent world, and gradually dealing only with the cancer patients I treat and their families. This life is very pure. Word of mouth accumulated over more than ten years has finally brought an influence beyond what I expected.

Because I have always practiced on the principle of fellow-suffering and aiding the endangered, my income has long been meager; it was not until 2016 that I could survive on medical practice. First of all, I must thank the kind benefactors who funded me, because even now a great many impoverished patients still receive my treatment completely free. Without the support of kind-hearted people, I would have trouble even making a living.

The Japanese doctor Tsumoto Shinkyoku (Tang Ben Qiu Zhen) was originally a Western doctor; after his eldest daughter died, he resolutely abandoned Western medicine and turned to TCM, enduring displacement for eighteen years. When I read his work Ko-Kan Igaku (Imperial-Han Medicine), I deeply admired his perseverance, while also being puzzled by the austerity of those who make TCM their profession. Only after I myself lived through that destitute life did I gradually know its taste. Compared with modern medicine, serious TCM values the spirit of compassion and saving the world; the physician gives far more to the patient than takes.

Social impostors who practice fake TCM certainly cannot do this, but among those who, like Dr. Tsumoto, have lost their own loved ones to the point of collapse and painstakingly resolved to save the world—how many are not like this?

When I was in business, I often earned tens of thousands overnight; though I did not throw money around, I lived freely. Now I have gradually grown used to spending not a cent on myself all day except for meals. The ancients said it is hard to go from luxury to frugality; my family, following me, has gradually adapted to our simple life, and I am very grateful to them.

I have long since lost interest in wealth and social status. After more than ten years of living in seclusion, I gradually have no desire to fit into any crowd; I only like staying in my study, with qin and books as companions, immersed in medical research, with no other distracting thoughts in my heart.

In 2017 I will walk farther and deeper along this road, but I really do need more rest. So, beginning this year, please forgive me for refusing many people; only thus can I walk this road of TCM anti-cancer research more focusedly and for longer.