Chronic Myeloid Leukemia

When Xu Chen returned to the dorm, he was surprised to find that Song Tian wasn't playing games. Instead, he was just staring at his phone, looking thoroughly dejected.

"What's up, Little Coward? Your girlfriend run off with someone?"

"Get lost," Song Tian shot back. "Bro, I'm in a bad mood. Just let me have some peace."

"Why? Let me have a laugh too."

Song Tian finally looked at Xu Chen in frustration, realizing he wasn't going to get rid of this rascal. "It's nothing much. My dad's sick, his health's failing, and the company's in turmoil too."

"So? Your dad wants you to go back and take charge of the company? And while you're at it, you'll root out the company's parasites, resolve its crisis, build it into a bigger, stronger business, double your net worth, and reach the pinnacle of life?"

Xu Chen had nearly made Song Tian laugh. "How could it be that ridiculous? Even if my dad can't run the company, there's still my sister. Besides, this isn't internal strife. The main problem is with our overseas suppliers. My sister says she has a solution."

"Then what are you worried about?"

"My dad's sick. Of course I'm worried. He's always been really good to me."

Xu Chen looked Song Tian up and down. "Wouldn't have guessed you were such a filial son. I remember you never even used to call home."

Then Xu Chen fell silent. Song Tian's eyes had reddened, and he looked miserable.

"I... I don't know. My dad was always the one who called me before. We'd had a bit of a falling-out, and I ignored him out of spite. I thought he was angry with me and that was why he hadn't called..."

Xu Chen didn't know what to say either, so he just patted him on the shoulder in comfort.

"Right... you're a medical student. Help me figure out what's going on with my dad." With that, Song Tian passed Xu Chen the phone he'd been looking at.

Xu Chen was only half-trained himself, but to comfort Song Tian, he decided to take a look. At the very least, he could say a few reassuring words to put his mind at ease.

Song Tian's phone showed his chat history with his sister, which contained quite a few diagnostic images. Xu Chen picked out the doctor's diagnosis; after all, he couldn't compare to an actual professional.

Then Xu Chen took one look and was stunned. Written plainly at the bottom of the diagnosis was: chronic myeloid leukemia (MCL), accelerated phase.

To be honest, Xu Chen's head was buzzing.

Some people might not know what chronic myeloid leukemia was, but anyone who had seen the movie Dying to Survive would probably find it familiar. It was the disease the leukemia patients in the film had, and Lü Shouyi, one of the main characters, died from the pressure it put on him.

Lü Shouyi had already reached the blast phase by then, and Gleevec no longer worked for him. His only option was a bone marrow transplant, and the success rate was low.

Xu Chen had also been interested in the disease in the film and had looked it up briefly. He had only a general understanding, but he knew that the accelerated phase of MCL was actually not much different from the blast phase. Both were late stages of the disease and difficult to treat.

But Xu Chen looked at Song Tian's hopeful face.

His family was certainly well-off, bearing out the saying that there was only one disease in the world: poverty.

With money, perhaps keeping his father alive wouldn't be too difficult.

But then there was the trouble at his father's company...

"Well, Xu?"

"What's the rush? I'm not done reading."

Xu Chen looked back down. Now that a diagnosis had been made, there had to be some treatment options. He ought to see what the professionals had to say.

Strangely, though, when Xu Chen looked at the treatments, none seemed particularly targeted. They only treated the complications on the surface, and for the chronic myeloid leukemia itself, they hadn't prescribed the original version of Gleevec, Glivec, or Imatinib or anything like that.

He found it odd. Even the blast phase wasn't such a big deal; it could still be treated. Surely they wouldn't go so far as to withhold medication altogether?

"If you don't mind me asking, who has the final say on signing off on your dad's treatment right now?"

"My sister. Why?"

"Does your sister have a problem with your dad?"

"How could she? My dad treats her just as well as he treats me. If the company wouldn't grind to a halt without her too, she'd want to put her work aside and take care of him."

It seemed this probably wasn't some melodramatic power grab. Such things happened, but not all that often. Bad people were rare in society, which was why it was surprising when they turned up.

"Your dad had a doctor's treatment plan before this too, right? What did the doctor say then?"

"What do you mean, what did he say? I don't know. I only just found out myself. My dad had this disease a month ago. That's why he stopped calling me—he didn't want me to worry."

Xu Chen slapped his forehead. He'd forgotten that the father and son had fallen out, and that Song Tian had been sulking and refusing to call or talk to him.

Then, belatedly, Xu Chen noticed something wrong with what Song Tian had said.

"You mean he had this disease a month ago?"

"Yeah. My sister said that's what the doctor told her."

Xu Chen frowned and scrolled up through Song Tian's chat history with his sister. At the top, he found a diagnosis from a month ago. His father had indeed only just been diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia then, and the disease had still been in its early stage. The doctor had prescribed medication as usual, and there had been no problems with the subsequent treatment.

But wasn't it a little too fast to progress from the early stage to the accelerated phase while taking his medication as prescribed?

There was a reason chronic myeloid leukemia had "chronic" in its name. The problem mainly arose in the later stages of blood cell development, and even when someone had the disease, it should have progressed quite slowly.

Xu Chen continued down the chat history. Afterward, there were two consecutive diagnostic reports from follow-up examinations showing that the chronic myeloid leukemia had progressed abnormally. The first was from the original doctor, while the second bore a different signature.

Apparently, the first doctor had been too inexperienced to handle it and had asked a second doctor to take another look. The second doctor's signature was noticeably more free-flowing; at a glance, he was clearly a master hematologist rather than an ordinary one, perhaps even a department head.

The second doctor also prescribed Imatinib, a targeted drug for treating chronic myeloid leukemia, along with other drugs Xu Chen couldn't identify. Judging by the bill, they were expensive, but effective.

After that came a long period of monitoring, with no break in the patient's diagnostic examinations. He underwent a bone marrow aspiration almost every few days, his drugs and therapies were frequently changed, and he received chemotherapy quite often as well. Xu Chen could hardly imagine how the patient had endured it.

Yet even so, the disease seemed like a trickling stream: no matter how one tried to block it, it would find a gap through which to flow and spread. It couldn't be stopped.

Only when it entered the accelerated phase did Song Tian's sister seem unable to bear it any longer and contact him.

The reason the doctor hadn't prescribed medication was that this drug had already been tried and had no effect on the disease, so it had been discontinued. As for chemotherapy, the patient's body could no longer withstand it.

Then Xu Chen reached the final diagnosis, the very one he had seen at the start: chronic myeloid leukemia (MCL), accelerated phase.

Only then did he understand why the doctor had prescribed some relatively inconsequential drugs.

Song Tian's father was like someone on a sloping cliff with a thousand-ton boulder hanging from his feet. The doctors had tried everything but couldn't pull him up; if they pulled any harder, he might die before he even fell into the abyss. All they could do now was hold him with a rope and watch him slip toward the abyss bit by bit.

But Xu Chen looked at the diagnosis. It hadn't been long, so perhaps the doctors were still looking for a solution, preparing to try something major that might cure him. Maybe that was why they weren't giving him any medication, so as not to interfere with the subsequent treatment.

After all, chronic myeloid leukemia was also a type of blood cancer, and cutting-edge medicine did have a certain treatment for cancer: gene therapy.

Expensive, but effective.