Mama is Hospitalised Again / 妈妈又住院了

妈妈上月初还很好，但她很想拿到慈善机构的的补助，因为她觉得自从她生病以来花了我们太多的钱，心里实在过意不去，这上百万人民币毕竟不是个小数目，在这么吃下去很难支撑。可要从官僚作风极为严重的慈善机构拿到补助，无异于登天，那些人不停地打着官腔，就是不办事，好人都受不了，更何况是癌症患者。连续跑了半个多月，终于累垮了，11月25日去看了医生，可吃了药后却更糟了，28，29日两天出现了昏厥和暂时失忆，被送院紧急抢救，星期三医生下了病危通知书，经抢救，昏厥和失忆没再出现了，医生说暂时也没有生命危险的迹象。目前仍在武警医院，多亏了穆主任，不然连住都住不进去。愿妈妈早日康复！

4 Years / 4周年

昨天是妈妈做手术的四周年。前不久，她也做了CT，医生说原发处至今依然稳定，只是她常投诉说心脏不舒服，

Mother's Day 2011

妈妈，母亲节快乐！
Happy Mother's Day to Mama!

三月的检查 / March Check Up

妈妈最近又住院了，一来是因为她最近心脏一直不太好，二来也是因为到时间该做一次全面检查了。19日检查的结果出来了，医生们都对这次检查的结果感到很满意，从CT上看肿瘤基本保持不变，她的主治医师穆主任和另外一位资深医师沈医生都认为她的病灶已趋于稳定，他们也想把妈妈的治疗情况编写成论文，希望更多的病患可以受惠。医生们也解释说心脏方面的不舒服可能是由于多方面因素造成的，如心情，季节等，而未必只是受到肿瘤的影响。这也跟早先我去庙里问观音的结果一致，由于从去年入冬以来她的心脏就一直不好，我于去年12月去问过，那时观音答“病安”，第二次是今年1月，观音答“病喜”，简直神了，菩萨就是菩萨，根本不需看什么CT，就什么都知道了。我一定要更加努力地绣好观音像，来报答她的大恩大德。
再次感谢各路神仙对我们的保佑！

Mama was hospitalised again recently. One reason was that her heart always had irregular heart beating since last autumn. Secondly, it was about time to have her complete check-up. On the 19^th of March, the results were out. Her doctors were quite happy with her results. They unanimously thought her tumour looked more or less stabilised. As for her heart, it might have been affected by many reasons, for example, mood, season etc. It was consistent with the answer I got from Guanyin. I went to the temple twice when she was unwell and asked Buddha about her health. The first time was last December. Buddha said "Bing An"; the second time was this January, Buddha answered "Bing Xi". Both literally meant her illness wouldn’t be a big problem. Amazing, no wonder she is a Buddha, without a CT scanning, she knows everything! I’ll put in more effort in finishing my cross stitch of that Guanyin portrait to show my great respect to her.

Once again, we’d like to express our thankfulness to Guanyin, Huatuo - God of Medicine, and all other Gods.

On the 25th Mar, the result of the 24 hours of heart monitoring came out. She has both atrial and ventricular fibrillation. That’s why she always feels so miserable. Doctor Mu said it’s still related to her tumour. It looks like the Tarceva is not enough to curb her disease. Her white blood cell level was just over 2000, which is not enough to do chemotherapy. Her heart would also not be able to take it. We can only hope that next month after switching to Iressa, her condition will become stable so that we can try another round of chemotherapy. God bless us.

Mama now is getting better. This time when she was hospitalised, she got the flu there because of her roommate. This is a severe problem in China. There are never enough wards for patients. They have to share. But if one of them is having an infectious disease, then it will easily spread to the rest. It made her feel sick after taking the flu medicines. Besides, the second blood test result showed that her white blood cell level was dropped to around 2000 which scared her quite severely. A few days ago, she took the test again. Her white blood cell level has reached 6000. Finally, her cardiologist prescribed a new medicine which she felt was not suitable. Now she changed back to her previous heart medicine and her irregular heart problem

Mama was hospitalised again recently. One reason was that her heart always had irregular heart beating since last autumn. Secondly, it was about time to have her complete check-up. On the 19^th of March, the results were out. Her doctors were quite happy with her results. They unanimously thought her tumour looked more or less stabilised. As for her heart, it might have been affected by many reasons, for example, mood, season etc. It was consistent with the answer I got from Guanyin. I went to the temple twice when she was unwell and asked Buddha about her health. The first time was last December. Buddha said "Bing An"; the second time was this January, Buddha answered "Bing Xi". Both literally meant her illness wouldn’t be a big problem. Amazing, no wonder she is a Buddha, without a CT scanning, she knows everything! I’ll put in more effort in finishing my cross stitch of that Guanyin portrait to show my great respect to her.

Once again, we’d like to express our thankfulness to Guanyin, Huatuo - God of Medicine, and all other Gods.

On the 25th Mar, the result of the 24 hours of heart monitoring came out. She has both atrial and ventricular fibrillation. That’s why she always feels so miserable. Doctor Mu said it’s still related to her tumour. It looks like the Tarceva is not enough to curb her disease. Her white blood cell level was just over 2000, which is not enough to do chemotherapy. Her heart would also not be able to take it. We can only hope that next month after switching to Iressa, her condition will become stable so that we can try another round of chemotherapy. God bless us.

Mama now is getting better. This time when she was hospitalised, she got the flu there because of her roommate. This is a severe problem in China. There are never enough wards for patients. They have to share. But if one of them is having an infectious disease, then it will easily spread to the rest. It made her feel sick after taking the flu medicines. Besides, the second blood test result showed that her white blood cell level was dropped to around 2000 which scared her quite severely. A few days ago, she took the test again. Her white blood cell level has reached 6000. Finally, her cardiologist prescribed a new medicine which she felt was not suitable. Now she changed back to her previous heart medicine and her irregular heart problem is much now better.

Three Years / 三周年

到今年的11月20号，已经是妈妈"术"后的整整三个年头了。在第三年里虽基本没什么大的波澜，但前几天也着实令人捏了一把汗，前一阵子，她再度遭遇不规则心跳，而且换了特罗凯后仍不见效，令我们感觉她已对已知的所有药物都产生了抗药性，就在我感到已经黔驴技穷的时候，我去了观音庙为她祈祷，神就神在这儿，令人不得不信，我求了一支签，签上说"病安"，从那以后妈妈只犯了一次心跳的毛病。奇迹啊！
感谢大慈大悲的观世音菩萨及众神和药神华佗。

This Nov 20 marked three years since Mama’s so called ‘operation’. Although nothing severe happened during this third year, the last few days turned out to be very frightening for us. She developed an irregular heart beat again, even though we had changed her medication to Tarceva. We were now feeling very discouraged. Was mama now becoming resistant to all the medications previously know to have helped? As again we felt hopeless, I went to the Guanyin Temple to pray for her. Believe it or not, She again answered us. After I came back, mama had only one further episode of irregular heart beat. Thanks to Guanyin, Huatuo, and all of the other Gods.

Mama's Dream / 妈妈的梦

妈妈在病中作过一系列的梦，有的梦十分蹊跷，我现在讲出来与大家分享：
1。 有一天，妈妈告诉我说她梦到她回到了家乡，跟外婆（已去世）在一起。她说：“在梦里，我感到外婆好像不行了。”“为什么？”“我告诉她我要回天津去的时候，她哭了，她说你再多住一天吧，明天我去送你。”“那你是怎么回答的？”“我说不行，我要赶回去。”“即使她都哭了你也还说要赶回去么?”“嗯，因为我还以为我要上班，而且在梦里我糊里糊涂地觉得你们还小，需要人照顾，你爸爸一个人也不行。”也许这个梦暗示她还没有到离开我们的时候？

2。 还有一次，她说梦到她和她的全家（既外祖母，阿姨们，舅舅们什么的）一起要去上海，那看起来应该是一次很愉快的旅行，他们聚集在码头上，船就要开了，大家都催促她快些上船，这时她忽然感到犹豫，她说是因为突然她想起了远在天津的丈夫，觉得不该把他一个人孤零零地留在家里，自己去玩。正在她犹豫的时候，船开走了；过了一会儿她决定要随她的母亲去上海，去询问下一班船什么开，工作人员告诉她刚刚开走的是最后一班船，叫她明天再来。冥冥中暗示她又一次与死神擦肩而过？

3。前几天，她忽然梦见家里有很多煤，她想我要这东西没用啊，家里是烧暖气，不是烧炉子的，煤根本派不上用场啊，要怎么办呢？她想起了一位年迈的远房亲戚，她家还用炉子，“我拿去给她吧，免得浪费。”一边想着一边背起所有的煤朝她家的方向走去，到她家后帮她一点点码起来。。。这不久后便住院了，旁边是一位奄奄一息的老妇人。。。巧合么？

Mama had some really strange dreams after she fell ill. Some are really hard to explain. Now I’d like to share them with you.

1. One day, she said she had a dream. In the dream, she saw herself go back to her hometown to visit my grandma (who had already passed away). She said to me,"In my dream, I felt your grandma’s days might be numbered."
"How did you know?"
"Because when I told her I'll leave for Tianjin, she cried. She had never cried before. She said,'today please stay. Tomorrow I'll see you off.'"
"How did you answer her?"
"I told her I can't."
"Even though she cried, you still didn't accept her request?"
"Because in my dream, I thought I still needed to work and two of you were still too young. Your father could not manage it alone."
Maybe this dream implied that her time was not up yet?

2. Her other dream was about traveling with her family (her mother, sisters and brothers etc. Most of them had passed away.) to Shanghai. It looked like a merry event. They were gathering on the pier. The boat was about to leave. They hurried her on board. At this moment, she hesitated. What came to her mind was her husband being faraway. She felt that she should not leave him alone at home and she should enjoy herself. While she was thinking, the boat left. After a while she decided to join her mother. She went to enquire about when the next boat would be arriving. She was told that just now the boat was the last ferry and they told her to come back the following day. Again, this implied to her that she had just rubbed her shoulders with the God of Death?

3. A few days ago, she had a dream related to coal (which shares the same pronunciation with the word "unlucky" in Chinese). She was thinking what on earth would I need that for? We had the central heating system to keep us warm and we didn’t even have a stove. Coal was something totally useless. What should I do with that? She thought of her distant relative, an elderly lady who was not rich and still using a stove. "I should bring it to her, otherwise it will be wasted." She carried all the coal and walked towards her house and neatly piled it up for her. Not long after that, she was hospitalized. Her roommate was an elderly woman who had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and she was about to…..Such a coincidence?

九月的检查 / Sep's Check Up

妈妈从星期一开始又住院了，这次的主要任务是作全面检查，做帕米治疗，打胸腺肽以提高其免疫力。检查结果基本令人满意，医生说跟以前比起来基本上没什么变化，看起来基本已经趋于稳定了，由此说来，生存超过五年是有可能的。白血球仍然偏低，只有3900（正常为4000以上），血钙也偏低，为2.04（正常为2.15以上），两项与癌症相关的指标，一项从原来的48降低至38.5（正常为35以下），另一项有所增加，由原来的1100+增至1300+（正常为1000以下），其他肝，肾，脾等均正常。爸爸听后很受鼓舞，他激动地跟大家分享这一好消息，然而妈妈听了很不开心，毕竟她并不完全了解她的病情。

Mama has been hospitalized since this Monday. The main purpose was to have a complete check up and have another round of pamidronate disodium treatment, injection of thymosin α1 to improve her immune system. Now the results are out and basically encouraging. Her white blood cell level, 3900, was still a bit lower than required (normal value should be above 4000), her blood calcium level was 2.04 (normal should be above 2.15), one of her cancer index dropped from 48 to 38.5 (normal should be below 35), the other increased from 1100+ to 1300+. The rest like liver, kidney and spleen etc, were all normal. From her CT scan, doctors said it looked like her condition was already getting stabilized. "This result shows it’s quite possible that she may survive beyond 5 years" The chief said. Father was so much encouraged. He couldn’t help sharing the news with others. But mama was very unhappy. Anyway, she doesn't fully know about her conditions.