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Home>Service> Awardees of Fervent Global Love of Lives Award> 13th Fervent Global Love of Lives Award 2010> Caner Fighting Doctor ─Chen Yueh-Chiu
Overcame Cancer ‧ Reborn and Optimistic
      Dr. Chen Yueh-Chiu, a teacher in Hsiuping Institute of Technology, was born on March 6, 1963 in a Hakka village at Nanjhuang, Miaoli County . She was adopted by a poor farming family since she was a child, and had to work for a part-time job while she was studying. She was graduated from Zhongshan Girls High School and later she obtained his BA, MA, and PhD degree at National Sun Yat-sen University . She is now the most popular teacher in Hsiuping Institute of Techonology. Chen Yueh-Chiu married to an only child Sheng-yi Huang, who worked in the technology field. She had experienced artificial fertilization and ectopic pregnancy in eight years. Finally, she was able to give birth to a fair child. In late 2005, Chen Yueh-Chiu was busy on the lectures in the institute, as well as her own PhD studies, she was diagnosed of a 7cm large breast cancer. Then she decided to “accept without regret, and face it bravely”. After various operations and chemotherapies in more than a year, and under the meticulous care of her family, relatives, and friends, as well as the love from all the students and teachers of Hsiuping Institute of Technology, regardless of the result, Chen Yueh-Chiu wants to shout out, “I am fine now!”
“The Story of Yueh-Chiu—A Life of Overcoming”
      Life is a process consists of serious of overcoming. This is true for most people, and I am no exception. There are three major obstacles and breakthroughs in my life: the first is t he breakthrough of my adopted child and poor farming family background; the second is my effort to overcome my sterility after marriage; the third is the ambush of cancer, which I will overcome again.
1. The Breakthrough of My Adopted Child and Poor Farming Family Background
      [Destiny] My home town Nanjhuang is a beautiful place. The shabby house which has gray walls and a broken roof is the place where I was born. My father was a mine worker; my mother used to sell rice noodle she make on the street. They have seven children, and I am the sixth. Five of them were girls, and I had a younger sister. Together with my grandfather, there were ten of us living in that house. My parents were like the mud wall supporting the house, which could barely support the family.
      My grandfather love gambling, a fact that made the situation even worse. They wanted to give away a girl, since a fortune-teller said Yueh-Chiu could have a good life only if she were the eldest daughter. My parents listen reluctantly to my grandfather and gave me away. My first adopter was pregnant a month after I arrived at their family, so I was sent back to my parents. The neighborhood find me lovely and was willingly to adopt me, but several months later I slipped away and went back home to find my mother. Finally, a farming family several mountains away paid my parent six hundred dollars and adopted me. In order to make my new parents, who were a newly married couple, happy, I started to learn Hokkien. I was then adopted by a 100% Hakka family, and had never gone back to my real parents.
      [Poverty] My adopter came from a poor big family. My great grand mother was given some land due to some policy many years ago. The parents of my adopter then had their own land for farming, which support their living. Water for the field came from a wild stream three kilometers away. The field could barely support the family. Since I was adopted, many good things happened to my adopters: my younger sisters and brothers were born, and finally I became the eldest sister who had five brothers and two sisters. My adopters thus decided to became bricklayers instead of farmers, in order to feed our enlarged family. Following the old ritual of an apprentice, my father has no wager for three years and four months. During that period, we made a lot of effort to keep frugal. In order to support our family, my adopted father worked extra hard and finished his apprenticeship prematurely. His first project failed due to his inexperience, the project cost us all our saving. The family was even poorer.
      In poverty, I went to school wearing a six-dollar plastic shoe. My home was in a deep forest, I had to go out everyday at half past five in the morning. It took me 20 minutes to go to the foot of the mountain, where I could accompany my nearest neighbor to go together. But I still need to cross a river, and follow the road for five more kilometers to arrive at the school. Everyday, I went out early and returned late. My lunch was always the half fired egg with vegetable prepared by my adopted mother. Rarely could they pay for my tuition fees on time.
      However, I loved to go to school, even I had to cross a mountain, even in rains, and even in storms. Once, when the area was hit by a typhoon, I spent a lot of effort before I went near the school. But I still had to cross a bridge, and the water of the river had already flooded the bridge, which could have been broken anytime. A sign was placed there forbidding people to cross it. So I went back to the foot of the mountain, and took another path to go to the school. I remember clearly that when I arrived, it was almost 10 in the morning. My teacher was teaching a lesson about “Genera Nelson, who did not afraid of difficulty”, she saw me walking back and forth outside the classroom, worrying about my late arrival. She led me into the classroom, and told the class with a smile, “This is a paragon of not being afraid of difficulty.”
      [ Difficulty ] I cherish my chance to go to school very much. In a rural area, going to school is a luxurious thing, not to mention for an adopted girl. The eldest family member was my great grandmother, she often said that as a girl, I needed only to finish my primary school study. After my father became a bricklayer, the family needed me to work some part time jobs to support the family. I knew my destiny since I was a child, but I still believed that I could change my fate.
      [ Determination ] When I was a child, I had never been able to have my own after-school books. One day in my third grade, I happened to picked up several pages of an old magazine. I read them careful, and found out that they were some discussion about education. That reading made me longed for education. As a result, I decided to choose education as my future career.
      Since my fourth grade in the primary school, I had been worried that I would be forced to work for the family after my graduation. Therefore, I often went to some wild places alone, picked up two stones, and kneeled on the ground to ask God by casting the stones, “Great Heaven and Earth, can Yueh-Chiu continue to study after I graduate from the primary school?” Sometimes the answers were yes, and sometimes no. But whenever I filled in the forms from the school about what we were going to do after graduation, I always filled in “continue to study”, for I believed that my teachers would require me more, which could increase my abilities to compete with people in the outside world.
      [ Efforts ] With the help of my teachers, I could finally study in a junior high school. I thanked my adopted parents for letting me study. In order to earn more time to study, I went to the river bank to wash the cloths of my family every early morning, and then I would feed the chickens and ducks, before I went to school. When I returned home after school, I would start to cook for dinner and study simultaneously. At night, after I finished all the housekeeping, I would go the temple near my home to study, since my brothers and sisters were too noisy. Sometimes when there the moon was still bright, I would study under the moonlight.
      Although I had a lot of housekeeping to do, but I study kept improving. Sometimes I even managed to become the best student in the whole grade. To help me to apply to a high school, my supervisor interviewed my parents several times. But one day, I heard my great grand mother said, “Our family does not have enough money. Even the head of the county cannot convince me.” I knew very well that, in order to walk on the path of education, besides normal colleges (colleges designed to train teachers), my best chance was to study and work at the same time. But, it was too difficult for a child from a rural area to be admitted into a normal college.
      Thus, after I graduated from junior high school, I convinced my family to let me work in a factory. I brought two set of clothes to Taoyuan and worked in a printing house. A new life started. I had to work and study at the same time. I had to be diligent, since it was difficult for students studied in the night section of senior high schools to pass the entrance exam of a normal university. I studied in early morning and late night. After one semester, I found no competitor in the class, a fact that might lessen my motivation; at the same time, since I had hepatitis in childhood, I thought I could not stand such a life until my graduation. But the worst was, the boss of the company I worked for was diagnosed of three different kinds of cancer, who died three months later, at the age of 43. Due to various reasons, I decided to take the entrance exams for normal colleges again.
      For the exams, I did not tell my family that I had quitted my job, and concentrated on my study. After I quitted the job I studied in the library everyday. But I still sent money back to my home. In order to survive and send money back to my home, I had to be frugal. So, for about three months, my food budget was only 10 dollar per day. I could only eat a pineapple bun of three to four dollars for each meal. I only went to a self-help restaurant once in two days. During that period, I did not dare to have company when I went for a meal. In those difficult days, two songs were my important spiritual supports: the first one is “Dream” by Hou Li-Fang, whose lyrics read “everyone has a dream, though no two dreams are the same; you must be diligent and insist on it in order to realize it”; the other one is a song by Hu Li-Wu, whose lyrics read “after you go across the dessert, the oasis will be there.” I often encouraged myself with these two songs. In order to fulfill my dream, I had to insist. I took the hardship at that moment as the dessert before I arrived at the oasis. I wanted to experience a history of struggle with my life so that one day, I could tell my students about it on a stage.
      [ Breakthrough ] IN the exam in that year, I was one point short of the requirement for a normal colleges, but, unexpectedly, I passed the exams for Zhongshan Girls High School .
      What was more wonderful was that, in the nights before each of the exam, I had a dream. The night before the exams for normal colleges I dreamt that I was going to cross a bridge, but I woke up one step before I arrived at the other side. What was stranger was that, one year before that dream, before I took the same exam, I had the same dream. The night before the united exams for senior high school, I dreamt that I followed a small path and came to a backyard surrounded by a row of short hedges. I had no other way to go but to go into the kitchen of the house through the backyard, and then I went through the toilet and a ditch, and followed yet another tortuous small path. I finally came to an exit; I went through it. Suddenly a broad road appeared in my sight, two rows of coconut trees stood beside the road. It was a road without end.
      When I was preparing to re-take the exam, I mainly studied on my own, except for two primary subjects that I went to a tutorial school to study. I did not think of going to a high school in Taipei , but those two dreams seemed to have some kind of meaning. I failed the normal colleges' exams, but I passed that of a good high school. I did not want to give up the chance, but I worried about how to convince my parents to let me study there. Thanks to my relatives and friends, I managed to convince my parents under the conditions that I would earn my own living and help my siblings to learn about schools in Taipei . This is the most important turning-point in my life.
      During the three years of my senior high school study, I had never gone home. I stayed in Taipei City , and I had only five hundred to one thousand dollars of living budget each month. I had never asked my parents for any money. Thanks to the officers and teachers in the school for arranging part-time jobs for me in the school restaurants and stores and for helping me in applying for scholarship, so that I could barely survive. The most special jobs I done is the one during the summer vacation after my second year. I was asked to make wipers. That was a job created by the officers in school for me. At the beginning of each semester, every student would be asked to hand in a wiper. That year was an exception. At the end of the previous semester, the officer asked parents of the students to donate some old clothes or dresses, or even curtains. Those were the material for me to make wipers. When the semester began, I gave the wipers to the school. My wager was determined by the number of the wipers I made. So in that summer, after I finished my tutorial class in the morning, I spent all my time making wipers at home in the afternoon. I even cut my own cloths in order to meet the demand.
      The study in Zhongshan Girls High School was difficult. I had only a limit amount of time for part-time job; I could not fully support myself. Besides helps from my family occasionally, I was lucky to have people to help me. One university student from the I-Kuan Tao student association of Chinese Culture University provide me with accommodation, two of the members there even paid for my meals to help me “crossing the dessert and come to the oasis”. I was later admitted to the Department of Chinese Literature at National Sun Yat-sen University . Their debt of gratitude will never be forgotten, and I also provide my help and spread the love to students who need them after I became a teacher myself.
      I did not tell my family about my university entrance exam before I was admitted. I convinced my parents under the condition that I would earn my living for the four years of my university study. If I could, I would even send some money back home. Fortunately, university life allowed me more space and time for part-time job. At first I worked in the university restaurant; later I worked as a private tutor. Therefore, during my university study, I had never asked my family for a single coin.
      However, there were times I ran out of money. I remember that there was a time I had no job and without any saving left. I did not know where to earn my next meal. I started to suffer hunger, I thought I would take that chance to experience hunger, and to see what would happen if a person did not eat anything for some time. The third day from then, I lay on the bed without any strength. I had an airy feeling. At this moment, I received a cash packet of two thousand dollars; that was really a rain in time in a dry season. The benefactor was my supervisor, I was very grateful for him.
      Because I did not want to increase my burden after I graduated, I insisted on not asking for a loan. To earn for my tuition fees, I worked in summer vacations for some well-paid jobs. Once, I worked for an electron factory for two month in a night shift; I also went to farms on Hehuan Mountain to cultivate vegetables and green apples; I worked in a restaurant in Alishan, from 6 in the morning to sell breakfast, until 10 in the evening. During these three summer vacations I accumulated many different live experiences, and solved most of the tuition fee problem. I asked for loans for two semesters though, since I really could not find enough money to pay for the tuition fees.
      [ Way out ] With the blessing from God, the help from people, and my own effort, I overcame my destiny as an adopted daughter and in a sexually biased family; I also overcame my economical difficulty and graduated from the university. I found my own way out.
      I had not forgotten my decision in my third grade of primary school. After I graduated from the university, I was unable to find a job in a school as a teacher. So I worked in Junior Chamber International Taipei as a secretary. After that, I worked for Mandarin Daily News to teach children writing, which was, finally, a job remotely relevant to education. But my dream was not fully realized, so three years later, I applied for the graduate school. Graduated, I became a teacher in a college. I finally crossed the dessert and found the oasis full of water and plants: I became a real educationist. After ten years working in the college, I felt that what I learnt was not up-to-date anymore; I had to follow the trend of the time. Therefore I studied for a PhD degree three years ago, majoring in Chinese Language and Characters.
      The road of education and academy was indeed like the road I saw in the dream before the high school entrance exams: it is a broad road without end. With a grateful heart, I walk on this road.
2. Overcoming Sterility
      After I married, my husband and I had the pressure to give birth to children, since my husband is an only child. After three years of a DINK (Double Income No Kids) life, our pressure increased overtime. Giving birth to children is an instinct of female. This simple wish incurred long expectations and disappointments. I often cried alone and asked God, “Why can't I do it while others can?” “Should I let nature to take its time or should I work hard to have a baby?” These questions troubled me for a long time. I believes that many of those who have the same experience understands that this kind of frustration, which is almost impossible to tell unless you experienced it yourself.
      Although my husband's parents tolerated us, but their expectations could still be seen from their eyes. Whenever we come to Zhusheng Niangniang, the fertility goddess, we would pray to her, but still no result. Finally, we decided to visit a sterility centre and asked for help. After details examinations, we found out that everything was fine, except that my husband's reproduction cells were not functioning well, due to the abundant usage of antibiotic during an infection in his university years. As a result, we had to asked for help from today's medicine and technology.
      The therapy was gradual, but basically, the female suffered. First of all, I had to use ovulate pill each month and measure basal body temperature to increase the functionality and chances of being fertilized. Half a year passed, the doctor suggested us to try external fertilization . For this, I had to swallow more pills and receive more injections. One more year passed, but we had still no improvement. Finally we decided to spend more than ten thousand dollars to try test tube baby. That was a worse process. Two months of preparation period, I had to receive injections both in the morning and in the evening. It was very painful. At last, an embryo was implanted inside me. But the good news last for two weeks only. My abdomen became bigger and bigger, and I could not move besides lying on the bed. I was sent to the doctor, and he discovered that it was ectopic pregnancy, the nidation happened in the ovarium, which caused internal bleeding. I almost died.
      In order to continue the bloodline, after some rest, we started again. After a year's effort, finally, eight years after our marriage, we overcame our difficulty in sterility. Zhusheng Niangniang blessed me with a health child.
3. Overcoming Caner
      [ Discovery ] In late 2005, my life was busy as usually. I was busying for the courses of my PhD study. When people of our ages return to school to study, they have to take care of their studies, works, and families; it will be like burning a candle at several places at once. Perhaps I was overheated; my body had some abnormal conditions.
      That day, I had not closed my eyes already for more than thirty hours. I thought that I should put down the work of my dissertation and take a shower first. When I was taking a shower, I found an abnormal “object” about an egg's large at my breast, a very strange muscle, I was surprised, and thought, “It does not hurt anyway, and perhaps I think too much. It should be okay, since it feels like there is nothing.” But I had a bad feeling about it: perhaps that was not a good thing. My mood worsened overtime, but since I was still busying for my school reports, I would leave it until I finished my works! After the semester, I thought, “Well, there will be a New Year vacation soon; I will go check it next year! Let me have a burden free vacation.” I was afraid to face it subconsciously.
      That year I cherished every meeting with my relatives and friends. I did not know whether there would be chance to meet them again next year. Whether I thought about it, I feel sad, but I dared not to tell anyone.
      [ Confrontation ] On February 6, 2006, I was finally brave enough to go check it in a hospital. The result would be available one week later. I felt uneasy during that week. Not surprised, the doctor diagnosed that the muscle in my breast was a tumor with a 7cm diameter. When he announced the result, I felt like the doomsday. I felt like I fell into the abyss; my heart struggled, and the feeling of life and death intertwined in my heart in an instance. I felt helpless, and did not know what to do next.
      My kid was in second grade of primary school. My husband hasn't even lived half of his life. Plus, I still had my two parents (real and adopted) and my grandmother; I cannot abandon them and let this ambush of the tumor disturb my life. I had to confront the challenges of life, including the cancer, with my sun-like smiles. I decided, at that time, “to accept it without regret, and confront it bravely”. I had to overcome it again. Therefore, I immediately asked for preparations of the operation, and to be hospitalized. After I finished the administrative works, I told my family when I returned home; they were frightened and did not know what to do.
      [ Cure ] On February 17, 2006, the excision operation started. That was an excision of a female sex character, which was also a partial death of my body. Facing the loss, what kind of mood should I have? In this depression, I thought that I had to find a reason for me to face it bravely. Suddenly, I found it: if I can trade a piece of my muscle for eight or even ten years time to stay with my family and my kid, that worth a lot! Muscles were still not that as important as my family, I should not be inflexible about it. Therefore, I encouraged myself, and was led to the operation room.
      On March 27, 2006, I received the first sessions of my chemotherapy, which consisted of six sessions. I received three doses in each session, and one session every three weeks. The whole therapy lasted until August.
      The most terrible thing about chemotherapy was its side effects. More than ten days after a session, I felt nauseous, lake of appetite, abdominal pain, diarrhea, loss of strength of my whole body, and gums inflammation. It was like serious morning sickness, cold, enterogastritis, and stomatitis comeing at once. Occasionally I would be melancholy, but the worst is over excited and could not fall asleep. A normal person in a night could sleep more than I could in a week. It was really painful. During these periods, my white blood cells were particularly low, I had to be cautious not to get a cold.
      The side-effects of my medicine were obvious. Fourteen days after the first session of the chemotherapy, my hairs started to fall. I could grasp a bundle of hair out with my hands without using too much force. In only a week, my hair became scattered. In order not to become sad about my hair, I decided to have it cut myself. I felt relieved afterward.
      The process of chemotherapy was painful. I thank my grandmother, husband, child, and various young relatives for their loves and supports, as well as those from my friends. I opened my arms and hold all the blessing. Loves came from various directions, even students graduated for a long time came back to visit me. They brought me different books, information, and consolations; friends from different religions brought me different blessing and prays. I felt that I am really a lucky person. So many people and gods helped me, I believes deeply that I am living in a beautiful world full of loves.
      Concerns and blessings from relatives and friends have a lot of life energy. I heard from them the message, “Don't be afraid! Following the doctors' therapy bravely, you must finish the whole therapy and overcome the misery.” I take his period as the valley of my life, like a long, torturous, and dark tunnel. Although it is painful to walk inside it, it is not with end. After I get through the tunnel and the valley, I will enjoy the beautiful sun again, and be recovered. I must become a happy and energetic cancer recovering patient. I must do my best to live everyday satisfactorily, so that I can be happy and bring happiness to my family.
      [ Rebirth ] When I was recovering, I put down my work temporarily. But I was not able to put down my PhD study completely. I barely finished the courses in the last semester. After the therapy, and rest for another month, I will be able to return to my lecture in school. As to my own study, I slowed it down, but I have not given up yet. After all, as long as I still alive, I should look forward.
      Often my friends asked me, “How are you now? Are you Okay?” Whenever I think of the future, I will still worry a little: I am afraid of the recurrence of the tumor, I am not confident in my study, and I worry about my career. How should I reply? Am I Okay?
      I think, no matter what, I must say aloud, “I am fine now!” People bearing the messages of God know well about the unpredictability and limitedness of life. The future is unpredictable. It is better to live in the present than to worry about the future. I am already more that satisfy that I am still living well and feeling fine for everything. I am living well today, so cherished today's time! I will do what I want to do and what I should do today. I love my life today and all the people who love me and people who I love.
      I had cancer. I will not ask, “Why me?” If it is not me, then who should it be? If it were to happened to any one of my family member, I would have borne even more helplessness and worries. I also thought about why there was a tumor inside my body. The living environment nowadays has a lot of trap; one could hardy defends oneself from them. Various books suggested various views. I did not know whether it was because I received too much hormones during my sterility therapy, plus the over-burden from my works in recent years, which caused my insomnia and deprived me time for sleep? No matter what, this is another homework for me from God, in order to remind people around me to take care of their health. It is also another lesson for me: the most beautiful thing of life is to confront every difficulty with love and optimism; during adversity, one should be calm and peaceful in heart, and to step forward with hope.