Thursday, October 29, 2009

Fade away

I felt a bit gloomy today.

One of my patients is a 22-year-old girl who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia 2 weeks previously. Chemotherapy has been given over the past one week. Now her white cells dropped to a dangerous low. She is really vulnerable for the time being. Yet, apart from nausea, anorexia and other discomforts caused by chemo, she started to experience some emotional problems.

She wanna go home and had a quarrel with her mother, who tried to reason with her and stopped her from doing so. I went to see her in the evening ward round myself. She appeared downbeat and repeated her capricious wish of going home today.

I can't blame her too much. She used to be active and healthy and has a rosy future but now she is confined to the hospital ward, struggling with her own dear life. I can't promise her anything, either. Even though her leukemia seems responsive to chemo, she has a long way to go after this: several cycles of chemo, hair loss, loss of appetite, infections in between, stem cell transplantation, graft-versus-host disease or possibly, treatment failure. That's too much for anyone. If I were her, I might be even more fragile, even more unreasonable.

She collapsed in her father's embrace, crying like a baby. Witnessing this made my heart tender. I felt my eyes wet a bit.

Leaving her undisturbed, I walked out of the room without saying another word.


Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Butterfly orchids


I went to a butterfly orchid garden in the last Sunday afternoon. There was rain earlier that day. Normally I would rather stay at home in such a crummy weather, but since it's my last weekend in Yilan, it's my last chance to pay the garden a visit.

The orchid garden is owned by my patient's son-in-law. I learned this in a chitchat with the patient, who had some lovely potted butterfly orchids in her bedside. I was intended to buy some orchids, so she invited me to drop by the garden right before her discharge.

It took me some time locating the place. For starter, I've only been to Yilan for barely one month and I worked most of the time, so apparently ain't familiar with this area. Besides, I worked on-call in the hospital the previous day and had poor sleep; I felt a bit groggy even though I've got a nap that morning.

The garden is a misnomer I'd say. It looks more like a greenhouse to me. Ha, my facial expression might betray my thoughts before I realized it. Mr Lu, my patient's son-in-law, told me purposefully the orchid garden is not for sightseeing; they're mainly doing business with merchandisers overseas.

Mr Lu is a friendly and generous chap. He allowed me to take photographs to my heart's content and told me about growing orchids and developing new species by hybridizing, which involved a lot of try and error. They experiment on colors, petal textures, blossom timing and a variety of different things. Once they got a successful hybrid (from the aspect of marketing), they are faced with another task: making clones. The funniest and riskiest part of the business lies here because one cannot predict the results perfectly well. Normally the whole process takes 5 to 6 years.

Mr Lu is very proud of Taiwan's pioneering biotechs in the development of new butterfly orchids. Even farmers who haven't received formal educations have the knowhows. Yet, on the other hand, he cannot help but whine about the government's pretentious promise of promoting the agricultural industry. He said a lot of farmers who don't have the proper marketing may sell out their hybrids to merchandisers in a much lower price than it would have been. The patent is apparently given up way too easily.


I came across with a news coverage earlier about the fact that Taiwan relinquishes its crown of butterfly orchids kindom and passes it on to Holland.

"Holland is richer and more industrialized," Mr Lu frowned slightly.

But he told me he's not that pessimistic since the weather is a lot better here. The orchids stop growing when the temperatures drop below 10 degree Celsius, so while Taiwan can grow the flowers almost the whole year, Holland is unable to continue in the autum/winter.

Right before my departure, Mr Lu showed me his newest hybrid. It's a bit bluish and a bit violetish. I inquired how much it costs, but he told me it's not on the market yet.

He gave me another lovely potted orchids as a gift and welcomed me to visit the garden again.