Chapter 299 - End of Zhang Fan’s rotations! (1/2)

Leukemia was truly such a heart-rending disease. It was incredibly difficult to deal with. Out of all the malignant cancer types, leukemia ranked #6 in death rate in China. However, leukemia also ranked #1 in death rate as a cancer which killed children and adults younger than age 35!

That was the scariest part about leukemia. Young children who hadn’t even grown up to mature yet would be forced to bear such tremendous pain so early in their life. The hematology department at larger hospitals would always be filled with bald young children. This was something truly heartbreaking and painful to behold.

What exactly was leukemia? To explain it rather simply, when leukemia was first discovered, it mostly afflicted people who worked with or had come into contact with radiation before. Leukemia had been particularly common in Japan after World War 2. Japan’s leukemia research was at the top of the world because Japan had a large number of leukemia patients after World War 2 due to the nuclear bombs.

After that, the next most common type of leukemia patient would be workers who had come into contact with various chemicals for a prolonged period of time. For instance, people who worked in shoe factories back in the early days. Making shoes required a certain chemical which contained benzene. Leukemia would also occur in construction company employees.

There were also some special viruses which could cause leukemia. However, these specific viruses were unknown!

The last type of leukemia was inherited. These were all possible causes of leukemia.

Normal people would be unable to avoid viruses and genetic problems. It wasn’t possible for one to choose their own genes. However, at least it would be possible to avoid radiation and chemical substances.

For instance, when it came to home renovation, no matter what style or materials you used, it wouldn’t be of any use at all. Chinese construction companies would use countless chemical glues and radioactive materials even though it was illegal. Would a layman possibly understand what was harmful or not? Of course not! In that case, the only answer was to renovate as simply as possible! Even now, leukemia’s exact causes were unknown! Just which specific chemical would cause it? Sorry, that was unknown!

Chemicals and radioactive substances were both capable of stimulating the human body. Children’s bodies would be especially sensitive to such stimulation. It would cause a change in the genes inside the body which would then lead to leukemia.

Many people would think that leukemia was a type of white blood cell disease[1]. This would actually be a mistake. To explain simply, leukemia would be caused by a sudden change in one’s genes, leading to hemopoietic malignant clones.

Hemopoietic cells were basically the precursor to red blood cells, white blood cells, and blood platelets in the blood vessels. Various factors would transform the hemopoietic cells into the other three types of cells. Leukemia would occur because of genetic factors causing large amounts of malignant cloning of the hemopoietic cells, meaning that the hemopoietic cells would excessively clone without maturing. These hemopoietic cells not maturing meant that they would be useless. This large number of useless cells would take up living space meant for normal cells. Leukemia was actually a disease which would lower the number of all three main blood cell types.

Why was leukemia so disgusting to deal with? First of all, it loved to bully children who were still young and weak. Secondly, it was a blood disease, which meant that it would affect the entire body. Leukemia was also highly difficult to detect in its early stages because it was located in the bone marrow and its symptoms weren’t obvious. There was only one early symptom: chest pain! Some leukemia patients might not even experience this one symptom!

The bone marrow was an organ for creating blood. The breastbone contained the bone marrow closest to the surface of the human body, which was why it would start feeling painful first. But, was it really possible to detect early leukemia? It would be almost impossible. By the time that the pain was noticeable enough, the leukemia would have already developed in the entire body, and even though the disease was in the bone marrow, the symptoms would be displayed elsewhere. There were many different types of leukemia which would have various different symptoms. For instance, gum bleeding, lymph node swelling, migraine, skin disease, or even testicle pain in men. It was possible for symptoms to appear anywhere in the body.

This was also why leukemia absolutely required chemotherapy to treat. Chemotherapy would actually be a process of using various medications to kill all the cancerous cells which were spread throughout the entire body. The medicine wouldn’t be able to differentiate between good cells and bad cells. It would kill both normal and abnormal cells, at most being slightly selective.

Thanks to technological advancements, Novartis, an incredibly powerful pharmaceutical company, managed to create imatinib, a molecular targeted drug. What exactly were molecular targeted drugs? Such a drug would be capable of directly affecting the abnormal genes so that the cancerous cells would no longer be produced. This was a foundational cure.

Although this imatinib drug was truly amazing, it was also tremendously expensive. One year’s supply of European-produced imatinib for a patient would cost 300,000 yuan at minimum. That was only the cost for this one medication alone, not counting all other medical treatment fees and medicine costs. Since Novartis was really powerful, it had the ability to set its own prices. What did that mean? Novartis could sell its drugs for whatever prices it wanted in different countries. If people didn’t want to purchase its drugs at those prices, then Novartis simply wouldn’t sell anything at all!

Although Chinese pharmaceutical companies were also capable of producing imatinib, this drug was something really high-level. The Chinese generic version’s effectiveness was far less than Novartis’s imatinib.

“Doctor Zhang, please start on the paperwork for Little Yu so that he can receive a blood test examination,” Doctor Ruan told Zhang Fan.

“Sure thing. Here, young man, I’ll get the paperwork started for you.”

As Zhang Fan worked on the necessary paperwork, he asked Jiang Chunyu, “Could I ask you to talk about your leukemia treatment?”

Zhang Fan had been in the hematology department for over a week now, but he had yet to meet a leukemia patient. Now that he met a leukemia patient whose treatment was fairly successful, Zhang Fan was really curious out of a desire to learn more medical knowledge.

“Alright. I don’t know what I should say, so I suppose I should start from the beginning,” Jiang Chunyu answered after some slight hesitation. He had never talked about his leukemia treatment with anyone before over the past few years.

Zhang Fan had Jiang Chunyu sit down as the latter recalled his memories.

“Back when I was diagnosed with leukemia for certain, I truly couldn’t even imagine that I had leukemia. I didn’t believe it at all. Why would I get leukemia? Could the doctor have made a misdiagnosis? However, the examination results and my symptoms all matched leukemia! It was the strain known as acute myelogenous leukemia! After I was hospitalized, I kept having endless amounts of blood being drawn from me. I then began chemotherapy.”

Jiang Chunyu then paused for a moment, and smiled shyly before continuing, “I used to have long hair, in a hairstyle similar to Liu Dehua’s (a famous Chinese singer). Haha, my hair was really beautiful, but I was forced to change my hairstyle after chemotherapy. I then felt all sorts of discomfort and disgust. I vomited everything that I ate. I had no appetite at all. It was as if there was a layer of plastic in my stomach that made me constantly vomit!

“The hematology department had a lot more patients back then. There were so many people with all sorts of blood diseases here. We would encourage and support each other. Although many of the people from that time passed away, those days truly helped me to feel so much warmth. They also helped me to really mature.