New Year's Message: May I Still See You in My Moments Next New Year's Day

The new year has arrived. For cancer patients, this is a day worth celebrating, because we have lived through another year, and our cancer age has grown another year.

By nature reclusive, I do not like making friends, so the people I have known over the years have basically all been met through work. This means that over ninety-nine percent of my WeChat contacts are cancer patients or their family members.

Most people do not feel that life is short and youth fleeting, but for cancer patients or their families, surviving each additional year is no small thing.

Over these years I have seen off many people—some parted by death, some by living separation. Each time I see someone off, my heart aches. I often see obituaries in my Moments; each obituary means another person has left me, and I must delete him or her from WeChat.

I pray that at the next New Year's Day, I am still here, and all you readers and fellow patients are still here. Though none of our lives can be called spectacular, life is priceless; simply being alive is already wonderful.

As long as we live, we still have the chance to create a miracle of survival!

Not long ago I called my teacher. He urged me to study medicine well and strive to become a renowned physician of my generation, while telling me that studying medicine is very hard. In truth, I do not fear however much hardship there is. What truly feels bitter is facing so many patients who turn to me and finding myself helpless.

When treatment fails, the sense of defeat and the pity for the patient are far more painful than burning the midnight oil over books. But medicine is just this imperfect: to cure sometimes, to help often, to comfort always. This is our real life—only a minority are cured.

People often tell me that, having heard from fellow patients that by relying on this big tree of mine their lives would be secure. What I can do is immediately correct the mistaken and over-high evaluation and expectations they have formed of me, and tell them the real situation.

Though letting someone down is a cruel thing, a doctor has a duty to tell patients the truth, lest it affect their rational decisions. Only when everyone, understanding the facts, reaches a rational consensus and builds a correct and solid trust—with the doctor doing his utmost and the patient cooperating earnestly—is that ideal medical care.

I have always been an idealist, unwilling to compromise, and unwilling to change my commitment to ideal medical care just to increase my caseload. At the least, if I have done my best to treat them but ultimately could not turn the tide, my guilt will be much less. Otherwise, practicing medicine would be no different from treating human lives as grass; what joy could there be in that?

In the new year, I also hope I can work a bit harder and raise my skill a little, to provide higher-quality service to the patients who turn to me, do my best to prolong their lives and improve everyone's quality of life. Only in this way can my heart find a little peace!

Next New Year's Day, let us celebrate together that we have lived one more year!