12.14.12
Finally….Fe!!
We left Oregon on Wednesday 12.12.12 and landed in Guangzhou on Friday 12.14.12 Where did that day go??!! Basically we traveled over 24 hours, but honestly the 16-hour direct flight from LAX on Southern China Air was not that bad. The video playing on the seat-back monitors for the last half hour before we landed showed stewardesses demonstrating self -acupressure to recover from the flight.
After making it through customs and finding our suitcases (thank God I have big strong Louie with me!!) we exited the airport to find a driver holding a sign with my name on it. The driver whizzed along a freeway through this very modern large city, arriving at Fuda hospital before 8:00 am. The driver walked us directly to Fe’s room. She and her sister, Jelly, were awake and happy we had finally arrived. I couldn’t give Fe a hug however; because of the protective apron she was wearing to protect others from the radiation pellets that had been embedded into her a few days before.
Fe is a very intelligent, spry, bright-eyed 54 year-old woman of Filipino descent. She came to Fuda from Canada where she’s lives with her husband David in Alberta. She found out she had breast cancer last mid-June when an ultra sound and mammogram confirmed that the lump she felt one morning in her left breast was a 1.6 cm calcium calcified tumor. She had a lumpectomy a month later, August 1st. By the last week of October she noticed a mass around what seemed to be a pimple at her surgery site. Her doctor ordered a mastectomy.
She and David began immediately researching what were the best cancer cures along with David’s sister Collyne. David found Fuda. Collyne found my site and wrote to find out what I thought.
Fast forward to today, here, now at Fuda in China. Four days ago she had her operation. That day she received cryo-ablation in six different spots; five in her liver and one in her breast. One in her liver was 2 cm. (It’s interesting to note at Anderson Cancer center in California, the largest tumor size allowed for freezing is 2cm. Here at Fuda Fe has heard that a recent procedure on another patient was 11.9 cm). At the same time Fe also had 20 iodine radiation pellets implanted around her breasts and surrounding lymph nodes and 20 around her liver. They will stay there for 59 days. They kept her in the ICU for the next 24 hours, which is the hospital protocol.
By the time I found her four days late, she was up and walking around, eating, visiting, seemingly full of energy!
Louie and I checked into our hotel a few blocks away and got back in time for a delicious Chinese lunch of steamed fish in Fe’s room, although we’re told family members are allowed to cook in a communal kitchen a few floors up. Just hanging around the room with Fe and Jelly there is constant comings and goings happening as nurses come into check on the vitamin i-v’s going into Fe’s arm to assist with her recovery, take her temperature, weight her and much more that I’ve lost track of. All and all, she is getting excellent care!!
Now Fe is going to send a message to any one reading this blog:
“In this hospital, there’s love money can’t buy. If you value your health, come to Fuda. They give you hope here. You feel it in the fiber of your flesh. And in your heart and in your mind, you’ll get better!! If they can make the stage five-cancer patients better, they can make me better!! And they don’t like patients here to be sad, because it will effect your immune system. They told me, we can help you but you must help yourself, so, they only thing we ask from you is to be happy.”
