Keep it up !!!

One of my patients, an old woman of indigenous Bu Nung tribe, has been afflicted with advanced breast cancer. She was often brought in by her daughter living nearby this hospital. In strict term, she is not a good patient based upon the way she takes her medicine.

Because her breast cancer tumor cells express huge quantities of hormonal receptors which means that taking a kind of oral pills that work on those receptors can shrink and kill the cancer cells, I asked her to take the oral pill day by day, not to skip even one. Initially, she did and treatment results were splendid.

However, gradually she lost her patience. After asking a leave from my clinic saying that her daughter would plan a sight-seeing trip for her to Japan, she was lost to my follow up for up to eight months. Basically without any treatment for that long period, her breast cancer worsened and spread to internal organs. She was brought back again.

I like to learn and use the language my patients are talking. Mostly, I ask them to teach me how to say greetings and encouragement in their local tongues. In order to let myself memorize and retrieve those learnings, I jolt them down in the beginning pages of the patients' medical chart. For this particular lady, I learn two important phases in Bu Nung: "U nin nang" (Keep it up! 您加油) and "Min da ma saga" (Please don't give up, you can do it! 懇請您再繼續加油).

Ultimately, she listened to me and underwent chemotherapy injection. For her, it is definitely tough.

One day after finishing a session of the outpatient visit, she was required to wait outside the clinic. She hesitated to move herself away from the chair but asked me, "Doc, say those words to me! Do you know how much strength I got from your saying those words you wrote on those front pages to me? Say it again, please."