Why Some Cancer Patients Live Long

Originally written by Zhou Zhiyuan (Huaizi Jushi) in 2012

After dealing with cancer for many years, I have gradually come to realize through practice that there are reasons why people survive long-term with cancer.

Aside from those whose cancer is relatively low-grade and was found early, a considerable number of cancer patients live long lives. Though it may seem accidental, it is in fact inevitable. In contact with such patients, I have found that the overwhelming majority possess remarkably rich medical and health knowledge—knowledge that puts many doctors to shame. After being diagnosed with cancer, their lifelong greatest cause becomes fighting it; the cancer drives them to engage with all kinds of cancer-related information.

Thus each choice they make, though it seems lucky, is actually the optimal plan chosen after careful deliberation. Two famous cancer-fighting physicians, Pan Mingji and He Ren, both survived with cancer for over thirty years and died in their eighties.

The lymphoma patient I am treating now—Dr. Li Zhonghui, a retired specialist from Beijing Chaoyang Hospital—has survived for nearly eight years and is approaching eighty. Given her current physical condition, barring accidents, she is unlikely to die within five years. Yet for the past ten years she has also been tormented by cerebral infarctions; at her worst she was hospitalized three times for stroke within five months.

These patients are themselves highly experienced medical experts. Physicians with over thirty years of clinical experience are nearly all seasoned generalists, so they can handle various common illnesses and cancer complications better than ordinary people.

Several other cancer patients who have survived over eight years—though not doctors—already put the vast majority of doctors who have spent a few years in oncology to shame. Most of them use their rich medical knowledge to help fellow patients. The Chinese proverb "a long-term patient becomes a skilled doctor" is vividly embodied in them.

Whether patients or physician-patients, when I interact with them I find I have no better choice than to learn from them with humility. Treating life-threatening diseases like cancer rationally requires considerable medical knowledge. Patients who spontaneously cure their cancer are rare; miracles are low-probability events. Learning to choose wisely and to care for oneself can greatly raise the odds of long-term survival with cancer.

The success of nearly every long-term cancer survivor cannot be attributed to the miraculous skill of any one doctor. Take Dr. Li, whom I treat: she consulted no fewer than twenty Chinese medicine physicians. Her husband has a close family friendship with the renowned anti-cancer TCM physician Duan Fengwu, through which she was able to come into closest contact with TCM cancer treatment and ultimately chose it. The other two TCM physicians, Pan Mingji and He Ren, as far as I know, both chose integrated Chinese and Western medicine. Dr. Pan long took targeted drugs; Dr. He Ren underwent multiple surgeries in his lifetime.

Having known Dr. Li for a long time, I realize that her high-quality survival to this day is not the credit of any doctor, myself included, but the result of her own efforts. Over these seven-plus years since her cancer diagnosis, she has repeatedly brushed shoulders with death, and each time she has successfully coped on her own.

I have also heard of many long-lived cancer patients by reputation, but regrettably have not had direct contact with many. Among long-term survivors I have contacted directly online—apart from one patient whose long survival is suspected to be due to low malignancy (I say this because after liver metastases were found, that patient underwent no treatment for over a year without serious deterioration)—the rest all possess medical knowledge rich enough to be my teachers.

Surviving with cancer is a very long war, and winning it is no easy task. The patient's own participation and the whole family's rational decision-making both play crucial roles. Once you have cancer, it really is necessary to study medicine earnestly.