Let the Drops on the Stone Steps Fall Until Dawn
Ge Hong of the Jin dynasty wrote a medical book called Zhouhou Beiji Fang (A Prescriptions Handbook for Emergency Use Kept at Hand). It was precisely from this book that Nobel laureate Professor Tu Youyou drew inspiration to discover artemisinin. Ge Hong's book contains many emergency formulas, and most of the herbs or foods in them were things ordinary people could easily find.People living in modern times who have not lived through COVID may find it hard to understand why Ge Hong did this. But after living through the medical crunch of COVID, it is easy to understand. In Ge Hong's day, with poor transport and logistics, rural people could barely get to market to buy medicine. Faced with sudden illness, if they could not gather herbs nearby or use some emergency method requiring no herbs and operable by ordinary people, they had no choice but to die.A single epidemic has put us in the same predicament as the common people of Ge Hong's day; many people cannot even buy a thermometer or a fever pill, and the herb shops have been swept clean. I have consistently refused to release any COVID prescription, for two reasons: first, my practical experience treating COVID with formulas is insufficient, and casually releasing formulas is irresponsible to patients; second, I worry that recklessly released formulas spreading around will drive even more frantic stockpiling, so that patients who truly need medicine can't buy it. These days, the problem I encounter most is patients' inability to get their medicine. With no medicine available, opening any prescription is meaningless.The medical crunch that hit Wuhan in early 2020 is now being reenacted across the country, and this is not yet the hardest moment. In a country of 1.4 billion, universal illness and universal stockpiling have swept pharmacies clean in many places.In early 2020, I was forced to use all sorts of emergency methods that need no herbs to rescue the people of my hometown. Back then, many sick families didn't even have foods like ginger, scallion, or garlic, let alone medicine, so I could only find ways to have them use hairdryers and bathroom heat lamps to treat themselves.This year, once again I must use drug-free methods to help more patients solve their problems. Being a goalkeeper of life in such an age is sometimes quite powerless. General symptoms in ordinary people can be handled, but the complex problems of advanced cancer patients—or of their elderly relatives burdened with a pile of underlying diseases—cannot be solved without drugs. These days, many patients and their families can't get to hospital and hope I can solve their various problems.In an earlier article I issued a warning that chronic-disease patients should stock up in advance on their daily anti-cancer, blood-pressure, and blood-sugar medicines. At the time I said that at the epidemic peak, even couriers might not be enough. I just didn't imagine the epidemic would progress so fast; many people hesitated for only a few days before the scene I'd warned of became real in their cities.I actually issued several warnings even earlier, but for various reasons such articles couldn't pass review, so I could only publish them on my own website, where few saw them. Only a few acquaintances who had been alert to my warnings since the end of 2019, who knew many of my articles couldn't be published publicly, and who regularly visited my website, made timely preparations. Now some of these people are in dire straits: the medicines that sustain their lives have run out, so their lives are in danger at any moment. Drug-free emergency methods are limited, and we can only hope the supply channels open soon.Excess deaths are already unavoidable; medical staff and funeral-home workers will feel this most directly. Omicron's fatality is only about one per thousand of the total population, and the medical crunch it causes will kill other categories of patients, but overall this death rate will not be very high. The public may not feel it much, because few acquaintances around them will die, but medical staff and funeral workers will still find deaths noticeably more numerous than before. The year ahead will be the hardest; epidemics will come wave after wave, and the frail elderly are most at risk. Between waves, whenever there's a chance, stock up on common medicines.Because I have long worked with critical patients, I understand this vulnerable group deeply, and now I focus my work on caring for them. Others, though miserable when infected, won't die once they find a way to break the fever; but these patients, once ill, easily develop life-threatening complications.So I hope lower-risk patients won't take up my time and energy. No matter how close you are to me, if at a time like this you seize the time and energy I should spend saving critical patients' lives, I may well delete you from my friends list and restore you only after the epidemic ends. I also hope young people will care more for the elderly at home; whether urban or rural, old people today are actually living in fear, and the medical crunch leaves them deeply insecure.My father is over seventy too, with coronary heart disease and emphysema—he is a high-risk person. On December 15 he was infected, developing throat discomfort. But he has been vaccinated (Sinovac inactivated vaccine) and boosted; after infection he promptly followed my methods—drinking hot water, supplementing protein, soaking his feet in ginger-scallion water, warming himself by an electric heater—and did not panic-drink things like banlangen (Isatis) or Lianhua Qingwen capsules. So he is doing well; his throat discomfort lasted half a day and basically resolved, and now symptoms have nearly vanished. Now I video-call him two or three times a day to greet him and chat a bit.My mother-in-law hasn't caught it yet, but I contact her daily to check on her condition. Old people have poor memory, and some things must be repeated; communicating with the elderly requires gentleness and patience. If the young don't care enough, the elderly at home often abuse medicine in panic. This is an important reason many elderly people's symptoms worsen; young people should urge them not to overuse drugs.At the peak, some people have no medicine available, while others easily die from abusing it. White coats and medicine are the lifeline and placebo people turn to when ill; many old people must take medicine to feel secure, and even some young people are the same. These people often end up at the extreme, handfuls of pills at a time, oblivious to the burden on liver and kidney and to worse consequences like drug-resistant infection.If there is no other way, you can skip medicine; self-limited illness resolves on its own without drugs, it just means a few more miserable days. Not taking medicine is far better than taking the wrong medicine; at least you won't suffer drug-induced death. Many deaths we cannot stop, but others are avoidable. Physicians wish to stop death, yet in such an age we are often limited by our reach.Jiang Jie's ci poem says: "In my youth I listened to rain in a singing pavilion, red candles dim behind the silk curtain. In my prime I listened to rain on a traveler's boat—wide river, low clouds, a lone goose crying in the west wind. Now I listen to rain beneath a monk's eaves, my temples already streaked with gray. Joys and sorrows, partings and meetings, are always heartless; I let the drops on the stone steps fall until dawn."Joys and sorrows and partings are heartless, and to fate's arrangements we can sometimes only resign ourselves. After every effort, the rain on the steps still "drops until dawn," and we can only follow heaven's will, though there is still a long road to "dawn." Buddhism says: do your best on the cause, and leave the fruit to fate. An age like this is fated to leave many regrets; do your best with what you can, and then let everything follow its course.Recently I have opened comments on all my articles for everyone to ask general questions. Those with mild illness, please read the replies; don't add me on WeChat to contact me alone.