Society
Empathy, drive and experience gets doc on top
By Cheng Yingqi (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-08-03 08:25
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BEIJING - In 1968, Zhang Xinqi, who was then 18-year-old, set her earnest sights on being a "barefoot doctor" in China's countryside.
These days, having exceeded all expectations, however, Zhang is now one of the very finest traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) practitioners at the Beijing Cancer Hospital.
It's been a hard road to the top. "When I've looked back to my early life, I have sometimes felt bitter," Zhang said, recalling a hardscrabble childhood, while reclining with ease on an office chair.
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It couldn't be more apt characterization for Zhang's own stream with its twists and turns. Born in Beijing to a well-off official family, Zhang at the outset enjoyed a happy childhood. But after her parents were accused of being reactionaries in the late 1960s, Zhang and her family were banished to North China's Hebei province.
There, in an impoverished village in Anguo, Zhang was in charge of carrying dung in a cane basket.
The only doctor in the village, surnamed Jia, was a "barefoot doctor". "Barefoot doctors" usually refer to farmers with only the most basic medical training who work in rural villages where most well-trained doctors would never live.
To underscore this point, Zhang recalled an incident in which Jia was giving injections one day.
"Jia asked 'is there any hot water?' The patient poured some water into a bowl," Zhang said. "The water was so dirty that it looked yellow."
"The doctor went on to rinse the syringe in the bowl and stick it into the patient's bottom," she added.
When Zhang asked why normal sterilization protocols weren't followed, she was offered a stern rebuke: "People here are accustomed to this - get used to it."
It was then Zhang made up her mind to replace the doctor herself. Not knowing anything about medicine, however, she journeyed to Beijing to learn proper sterilization treatment.
Guo Qingfeng, head of the acupuncture department of the Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital turned out to be her first teacher and mentor.
It was a good experience. Guo taught Zhang the basic rules of needle treatment, and guided her in administering an acupuncture procedure to a deaf 8-year-old.
Zhang would follow Guo's reverence for Hua To, the inventor of acupuncture as a path to pursuing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). "You should remember his name," said Guo.
After three months of training, Zhang returned to the village in Hebei province and soon found local fame for her endeavors in "curing deaf people".
Although she only cured seven or eight children, "local villagers believed I was professional", Zhang recalled. "Many people were attracted to my village, bringing their deaf children, and I felt fulfilled."
In addition to practicing needle treatment, Zhang used her own money to purchase absorbent cotton, painkillers and aspirin while distributing drugs free to the villagers.
Initially, not knowing how to administer needle infusions to other people, she tested it on herself.
Fortunately, things turned out well - despite the fact that she could have seriously hurt herself. "I was simply ignorant at that time, I feared nothing," Zhang said.
Zhang performed her own medical tests in the village for two years, before progressing to become a doctor at a Shanxi plant. In her drive to become an accredited doctor, Zhang went on to a university in 1975 before working in a Shanxi-based TCM hospital until she returned to Beijing.
"The experience of being a barefoot doctor made it easy for me to get along with my patients," Zhang said.
Although a standard consultation with Zhang is 200 yuan ($29), she provides free care to people who are very sick and very old.
Zhang said that curing cancer should include physical recovery, health recovery and mental recovery, "simple therapy would probably kill cancer cells, but that is no equivalent to (total) health".
According to TCM theories, cancer is the result of an unhealthy lifestyle, Zhang said. "I know that traditional Chinese medicine works in the way of changing one's lifestyle - but it is hardly a cure-all."
Whenever someone enters her office, Zhang looks the person squarely in the eye. "You have to have emotional bonds with the patients," she said. "You have to show sympathy - and you have to make them trust you."
Often, she calls her patients "darling". "That will quell their fears," she said.
Zhang recalled one patient telling her that he would rather die than continue suffering. "Darling, in your heart you actually want to live, only you dare not speak it out," Zhang replied softly.
"Let's try to make it happen together," she added. In the end, Zhang convinced the patient to undertake efforts to fully cooperate with medical treatment.
But the one thing she tells her patients the most is to cherish each day, and be optimistic about tomorrow.
