In January 2000, Li Chiu-hsiang received a transplanted kidney. Dr. Li Ming-che of the organ transplant team at Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center asked her if she wanted to keep her Tenckhoff catheter, which had accompanied her through years of kidney dialysis treatments, as a souvenir. She replied, “No way! I want to say good-bye to it forever!”

In summer 2003, a malignant tumor was found on Li’s other kidney; the cancer had already metastasized to her bones. She knew chemotherapy would be useless, so she refused any treatment. She also decided to donate her organs because she had once received such a blessing from a stranger.

On April 16, 2004, at Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center, Li spoke of her wish as though in a dream: “Dr. Li, thank you, I still need your help with my last wish.”

The following day, Li passed away with her family by her side. The organ transplant team at the Tzu Chi Medical Center took her corneas, fulfilling her wish of leaving her love behind in the world.

We are glad that we had a chance to interview her before her death. She let us see the changes in her psychological state after she became ill. We learned many things from her, and, with her agreement, we would like to pass on her story to the public.

When she was 24 years old, she suffered from a kidney illness. It was so serious that she needed dialysis. She couldn’t accept this fate until a word from another kidney patient woke her up.

Li was born in Chihsingtan, a small village near Hualien. Her father was a fisherman and her mother was a farmer who later ran a food stand.

After finishing high school, Li helped out at her mother’s food stand. In 1990, she went to work with friends in Taipei. A year later, her colleagues noticed that her figure seemed to be becoming rounder. She found that her legs had become as thick as an elephant’s and that she couldn’t put her shoes on. The doctor discovered that she suffered from edema caused by her kidney illness. She was only 24 years old.

Li didn’t know much about her kidney disease. She took some medicine and the edema disappeared, so she went back to work. Whenever the edema reappeared, she would take the medicine and take some time off from her work. Unfortunately, the condition became worse, and she eventually had to quit her job and stay at home.

Li said that at that time, she turned her stomach into a mini drug store, because she would try any medicine that anyone introduced to her. She went all over Taiwan to find doctors and try their special recipes. She was so worried about her illness that she simply accepted any medication, Western or Chinese, given to her. She thus wasted a lot of time and money and also caused even more damage to her kidneys.

Li’s mother would boil some herbs for her every morning, but Li didn’t want to drink the concoction. Sometimes she would drink some in front of her mother and pour the rest out when she wasn’t looking. Her mother later found out about it, but she didn’t scold her. Instead, her mother felt sorry for her for having drunk so much bitter herbal liquid. She sympathetically said to herself, “It’s okay if she wants to skip it for a day or two since she has drunk so much anyway.”

Two years later, Li had palpitations and couldn’t eat. She was diagnosed with acute glomerulitis, and she started her dialysis.

Her first dialysis was carried out by inserting a catheter into a vein in her neck. It was very painful, and her sister, who had accompanied her to the clinic, almost fainted while watching the procedure. Li was doing her dialysis in Kaohsiung, but in May 1996, Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center opened its peritoneal dialysis center, so Li went there instead. She also signed up for a kidney transplant.

Yu Chun-hui, chief nurse of the dialysis center, was the first nurse Li met when she went there for dialysis. Yu recalls, “Li chose peritoneal dialysis so she wouldn’t need to travel back and forth between home and the hospital. However, the dialysis didn’t go well, and she had edema.” Li found it very difficult to deal with this failure.

Li and her mother traveled to the United States with a group of kidney patients, and she was surprised to see that her fellow travelers could happily lead a quality lifestyle. One patient noticed that Li’s mother would bring food to Li and would eat anything Li didn’t like. This kind patient told Li not to be too dependent, and she also reminded Li’s mother not to be overprotective of her daughter.

The words really woke Li up and she vowed to pull herself together. She bought a treadmill for exercise. At first she could run no more than five minutes, but gradually she was able to run 20 minutes nonstop.

On January 4, 2000, the organ transplant team at Hualien Tzu Chi Medical Center called Li and told her that she might have a chance for a kidney transplant and that she had to wait at home for further news.

Li was shivering with excitement, but she also wondered if all this could be true. She had been notified of a possible transplant twice before, but they both fell through because the donors’ tissues didn’t match. She said that she felt like she was riding a roller coaster. She was too agitated to eat her lunch.

At 3 p.m., Li’s operation schedule was confirmed by the hospital, and she was wheeled into the operating room at 5 p.m. When she woke up, she had a new kidney in her lower right abdomen. She still clearly remembers this event four years later. “When I woke up from the surgery, there were so many tubes in me. I couldn’t move around, but there wasn’t any pain either.” But she still remembers clearly that it was very painful when the Teckhoff catheter was removed from her body.

Li said with a smile, “I was in the hospital for 21 days, because my new kidney wasn’t working--it loved to sleep and refused to work.” Usually a newly transplanted kidney starts working right away; but her kidney had been taken from a donor who was in shock, so its condition was different.

The kidney didn’t work for the first three days after the transplant. She thought that it might just be slow, so she had to give it some time. But a week later, it still was not working properly. Volunteer Lin Pao-tsai, who constantly came to see her, told her to be kind to it and talk to it more often.

Li would touch her lower-right abdomen, where the new kidney was located and talk to it: “We are one living community. You take care of me, and I care for you. We support each other. You have to start functioning so I can carry on with my duties.” Li also gave its new kidney a name, “Right Kidney Li,” and reminded it constantly, “I still have so many things to do. Since we are bound together, you have to help me.”

Her brother and sisters would phone every day and ask whether the new kidney was obedient and working. Li recalled that they would also chant Buddhist sutras and dedicate the merits to Right Kidney Li. Perhaps because so many people were caring about it, the new kidney finally woke up and started working.

While Li was hospitalized, her mother and sister basically lived in the hospital with her. (In Taiwanese hospitals, families are expected to help take care of patients, and cots and even kitchens are provided for their use.) When her sister got off from work, she would come to the hospital to take their mother to a night school, where she was studying for her degree, and then return to the hospital and stay with Li until dawn. Then, her sister would go to work, and their mother would come to the hospital with her homework.

Li said that her family members wanted to donate their kidneys to her, but none of them was a match. With tears in her eyes, she added that her family’s love for her was enormous. Ever since she became sick, one of her sisters had taken care of everything, humbly saying, “God sent me to take care of you.”

Besides her family, Li also wanted to thank the donor and the medical team who treated her like a family member. She said, “Dr. Li Ming-che is very kind. If a patient has a question, he will explain until the patient fully understands. He visits the wards many times a day, even on Sundays.”

Li was finally discharged from the hospital after the new kidney started working 10 days after the transplant. Volunteers visited her often to see how she was doing. When they went to see her, they also invited her 95-year-old grandmother to join them. The old lady was so happy to see them that she even sang songs for them.

Li’s transplant was ultimately very successful, and there was no sign of any rejection. She also became a model for all kidney patients. She once talked to a kidney patient who really did not want a kidney transplant. This patient felt it disgusting to have someone else’s kidney in his body. He was afraid the transplant might fail, and he also worried that it would be a lot of trouble to look after the new kidney. Furthermore, he would have to take medicine for the rest of his life to prevent his body’s rejection of the new kidney….

Li told the patient not to be so fussy, since this was a great opportunity. If he didn’t take the risk, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the results. One should always take good care of his body anyway; if not, even a good kidney would not be able to survive an irregular lifestyle and abnormal diet.

With encouragement from Volunteer Lin Pao-tsai, Li also appeared on Tzu Chi Great Love TV to tell her own story. She said that a mother saw her on TV and asked her many questions about how to take care of a kidney patient, because her own daughter was undergoing dialysis as well. Li felt that Tzu Chi TV was very influential, since it allowed her to make friends with many people.

Li said that before she became ill, she lived her days blindly, but after she became sick, she realized that life was impermanent. Everyone has to grasp every moment, or else at the end they will regret not having done enough.

Li finally received a healthy kidney so she could be free from dialysis, but another lethal illness struck her out of the blue. In July 2003, her waist hurt and she couldn’t walk properly. In the hospital, she was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on the other kidney, and the cancer had already metastasized to her bones.

Dr. Li Ming-che suggested chemotherapy, but she said, “Since metastasis has already occurred, just let it be.” She asked, “I received a kidney from a stranger, so what organ can I donate?” Dr. Li told her she could donate her corneas, and Li agreed.

Li didn’t want her mother to know about her condition, so every time she came home from the hospital, she bore the pain and just told her mother, “It’s nothing; I’ll be fine after I take my medicine.” She also kept going to work to make everyone believe that she was still healthy.

However, her strong will couldn’t fight against the vicious illness for long. She was hospitalized in March 2004, and was transferred to the Lotus Ward (the palliative care ward for terminal patients) in April.

Li was an understanding person. One week before she passed away, she knew it was about time. She would take a bite of every piece of food visitors brought her. If she couldn’t swallow it, she would at least touch it with her lips to show that she had received the love.

On April 16, she told Dr. Li as though she was in a dream, “Dr. Li, thank you very much. I still need your help with my last wish….” She even gave him a thumbs up to praise him as a very great doctor.

Dr. Li nodded his head, held her hand, and said, “Okay, thank you and bless you….” Choked with sobs, he lowered his head and left the ward.