A Good Death for Cancer Patients

When cancer patients enter the terminal stage, some experience cachexia, cancer fever, cancer pain, and similar conditions; the hospital gives up treatment, but the family does not give up and keeps seeking ways to salvage the situation. In fact, for terminal stage-IV cancer patients, excessive traumatic treatment at this point means little; it only worsens and prolongs suffering. The doctor's gentle refusal is more humane than encouragement to continue treatment. The family should consider making the patient's dying less painful; a happy death is better than a death after torments.

In the last forty-plus hours of my mother's life, she could still go out for walks and play cards. I initially felt great pain at her passing, but as time passed and I saw more of the sufferings cancer patients endure before death, I feel my mother was almost one of the happiest advanced-cancer patients. In my hometown's saying, when a person falls ill and takes to bed, it is called 'falling to the bed.' My neighbors always told me, 'Your mother was blessed to leave without falling to the bed; some people lie in bed for months, tortured to death—that is the real suffering.' Now I understand my neighbors' comforting words. They are elderly people about my mother's age, knowing their own death is not far off; for them, to die with less pain is one of life's blessings.

For modern people, to die without illness is almost impossible, because modern medicine is far more developed than before; a routine checkup turns up a host of diseases. So many modern people die in hospitals, tubes inserted, heading to the other world after various traumatic resuscitations. Having seen so many traumatic resuscitations, I am now fairly calm about my own death. If one day I fall ill beyond the doctors' treatment, I will prepare some poison myself to end it. My medical skill is not refined enough to save lives, but I still have the skill to prepare poison to end my own.

I still have an elderly father. He has repeatedly told me that if one day he becomes terminally ill beyond treatment, I should not exhaust myself trying to resuscitate him. My father takes this matter rather openly, because he now lives in the countryside and often beats gongs and drums to send off his contemporaries at funerals; many of those in the coffins are his childhood friends.

Everyone must die, whether by illness, old age, or accident. Chinese people value filial piety and family bonds deeply, so when a family member falls ill, they easily lose their reason and pursue treatment at all costs, not caring whether the treatment is meaningful or whether it prolongs the family member's suffering. When survival has too little quality, is death not a release? Among the cancer patients I now meet, as far as I know, although patients at the last moment feel some reluctance to leave the world, after being tormented by cancer, most would rather be released sooner. Especially patients with religious faith—for them, release is not to be feared; they believe they can be reborn or pass to a pure land. Such people are enviable.

We have not received sufficient death education, which is why we care so much about life and death. Death is a normal natural phenomenon; a good death is far more meaningful than a painful life.