A fearful cancer and my life
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By Shin Chul-ho
On March 6, I was admitted to a general hospital to examine whether I had lung cancer. The nine days that I was in the hospital is a novel dotted with shocks, frustration and delight, like non I have ever experienced.
I was troubled with a bad cough for more than a month. I went to see a pulmonologist. Just by asking a few questions, he pinpointed the cause of the symptoms of my “chronic cough.”
But his treatment was just the beginning. I took pulmonary function and asthma tests. Fortunately, no problems were found.
Then, the doctor said, “Any doctor should have seen this, even though it has nothing to do with your cough," pointing at a tiny blur in the lower part of my right lung in an X-ray.
I took a CT scan. Six days later, he made a serious remark, showing me the CT scan. He said that the blur seemed to be a tumor. He suggested strongly that I should be hospitalized for a biopsy as soon as possible. At the moment everything was dreamlike. “Is it okay to have it in August or during summer vacation?"
“Nope. It's urgent," my doctor insisted.
The next day I was in the hospital and the day after that a biopsy was taken. I didn't feel much pain under local anesthesia. However, something like a thick needle penetrated my chest relentlessly many times. The gruesome shots made a chill run through my spine, which was more severe than pain.
The surgical procedure caused pneumothorax, a side effect. With a tube stuck in my chest, an oxygen inhalator connected to my nose and my arm pierced with a needle for an intravenous drip, I was not feeling well.
My wife and I were waiting with impatience for the biopsy result that would hit me in three days. I looked up at the ceiling. It often began spinning around.
I drew a lot of pictures by combining some patterns on the ceiling. Outside the window, plumes of grey smoke were billowing lavishly from the chimneys. I hardly recognized the changes from day to night.
Tears flowed down my face before I knew it. I thought that I had lived such a harsh life that, if I survived, I would do what I want to do, talk with my two daughters more and live a happier life with my wife. I told her that I would leave my teaching job, and she nodded with a smile.
The day that the biopsy result was approaching, my wife with tears in her eyes said I could not have lung cancer because I had never smoked, hardly drank, worked out regularly and always had a healthy, balanced diet.
However, who could erase the shadow of a tumor in the CT scan? I was standing at the door to the next world.
What a marvelous surprise. It was just an inflammation. The moment that I was released from the curse of cancer, I felt my body being covered with health and a shout of triumph.
I was excited about the possibility of living a happy life after leaving the hospital. At that moment the doctor cast a cloud over my bright future, saying, “The biopsy cannot be 100-percent accurate. You're now in treatment for pneumothorax, so this time it's much easier to take a biopsy."
The next morning a resident doctor said threateningly, “It's 100-percent cancer." The remark was thrown at me because of my refusal to be reexamined.
They were 100-percent sure that I had cancer. After the second biopsy, my wife and I waited for the results for another three days with uneasiness and anxiety.
The death angel was hovering around me. A miracle presented itself again. It was not cancer this time either. After three days, I left hospital as a person with a changed view of life.
There were four beds in the ward. I was there with three patients with advanced diseases such as liver cancer, colon cancer and chronic diabetic complication. They were hanging between life and death. As I stood agonizing at the crossroads of life and death, I felt it in my bones how miserable the critical patients felt.
I discovered some profound words in a book that my daughter had left at the corner of the bed: Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always. Then, a sentence in prologue, a poem written by Yun Dong-joo, soared up to me: “With the heart singing for stars, I am to love every dying creature.”
The writer is an elementary school teacher outside of Seoul. His email address is heemy123@hanmail.net.