Hospice founder honors pledge
In 1969, Li Songtang decided that one day he would open a hospice for terminally ill patients.
At the time, he was working as a “barefoot doctor”, providing basic medical treatment in an isolated village in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
“It was my promise to Mr. Zhang,” he said, referring to a former academic who lived in the village after being expelled from Beijing during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76).
Despite being terminally ill, Zhang suffered more from his “political black mark” than physical pain during his last days. “The whole village knows you are a good person, and you are going to leave here for a wonderful place,” Li said, comforting the old man shortly before he died.
“It’s important to help the terminally ill unload their psychological burden,” Li said. For that reason, he has a rule at the Songtang Hospice, which he founded, that members of staff must hold a dying person’s hand if their family is not present.
“You can’t just leave a patient to face death on their own,” the 69-year-old said.
“That contact means something. It is the same as a baby needing the sense of closeness that comes from being held in its mother’s arms.”
Wang Longfeng, 65, who has myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells, shares a ward with seven other women, three paintings of the Buddha and a cricket that has reached the rare age of more than 100 days.
“The cricket is also receiving end-of-life care here,” Li joked.
He said eight out of 10 patients ask themselves, “What would you like to be in the next life?”
Like most of her roommates, Wang would like to be a man. “I have a masculine character — I don’t care about anything and I can do heavy work,” she said.
Li said, “Everyone has their own ideas about death.” He recalled a dying patient, a former soldier in the Red Army, who told him, “I’m going to see Karl Marx.”
Qin Yuan, an oncologist who is director of the hospice ward at Haidian Hospital in Beijing, shares Li’s philosophy.
She said caregivers should respect patients’ wishes and take them into account when making decisions about treatment and care.
Every treatment in Qin’s hospice is personalized through meetings in which the patient, family members and the doctor sit in a circle for face-to-face discussions.
“The biggest change is putting greater emphasis on what patients need rather than what we have,” she said.