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On April 23, Cai Lei was interviewed by CCTV reporters again.
In the first 40 years of his life, he was an executive of Vanke and JD.com, and a promoter of electronic invoicing.
He married a "high-end" wife and gave birth to a smart son, a proper winner in life.
However, all the good things came to an abrupt end in 2018.
ALS, which is crueler than cancer, has completely pulled this "pride of the sky" off the altar.
The tongue and lips are atrophied, and it takes all the strength to speak.
Wear a ventilator to sleep, and if you relax a little, you will suffocate.
What surrounds Cai Lei now is endless despair and darkness.
Yet in his slurred words, the search for hope was clearly audible.
"Do your best, and I'm going to do the final blow with death. ”
I visited again after two years
On the eve of World Book Day on April 23, CCTV reporters visited Cai Lei again with the book "Believe".
This book published by Cai Lei in 2023 has brought strength and hope to countless people.
"Even if you are defeated, you will never give in. ”
"I'm going to the moon on my bike. ”
Cai Lei uses vivid brushstrokes to depict a bright future.
However, at this time, he was in prison and couldn't extricate himself.
When speaking to reporters, he slurred his speech.
If you are not familiar with someone who knows him, I am afraid it will be difficult to understand what he means.
Who would have thought that this once talented man would not even be able to speak clearly?
This year is the fifth year that Cai Lei has been diagnosed with ALS, and his body has already undergone earth-shaking changes.
The first time I noticed something was wrong was in 2018, when Cai Lei was still a vice president at JD.com.
At first, he only thought that it was because of the pressure of work, and he did not put his physical discomfort on his body.
When his muscles were beating frequently, he rushed to the hospital for treatment.
In the past year, Cai Lei has traveled back and forth to the hospital many times for examinations.
Finally got the exact results in 2019.
He developed ALS.
ALS has a cure rate of 0 in the world, which is undoubtedly a death sentence for him.
Every day since then, Cai Lei has spent it in despair.
At first, he just lost his strength in his left hand and couldn't hold anything.
Later, this "feeling of powerlessness" gradually spread throughout the body.
The disability of his right hand evolved to the point that he could not lift his arm, and then he could no longer walk on his legs.
The apt name "ALS" is that it freezes people little by little until the day they die.
The muscles atrophied day by day, and Cai Lei lost his mobility.
He can't do the little things like dressing, eating, drinking water and toilets on his own.
He was in a wheelchair, and his wife helped him brush his teeth and cover the quilt.
Later, Cai Lei's tongue and mouth also shrank.
What he could say with his mouth open, he had to use all his strength to say it.
Even so, his words were slurred and difficult to hear.
Taking a bath is also a difficult thing for Cai Lei.
He could only hang himself up with a rope to stay still, and then take a bath.
Many people wonder why they don't sit in the bathtub and wash.
Cai Lei's whole body was weak and he couldn't sit steadily at all, so he needed a rope to stabilize his body.
During the conversation with reporters, someone next to him was constantly adjusting his sitting position.
Either put his hands in the right place or straighten his shoulders.
Today's Cai Lei is like a doll to be manipulated.
But the difference is that he has to wear a ventilator all the time when he sleeps at night.
If there is no ventilator, Cai Lei will suffocate to death.
Because his respiratory muscles have long been atrophied and weak, the ventilator is his "lifeline".
Life has been so difficult, Cai Lei still did not give up hope.
He can also show a faint smile when talking to reporters.
"Give me ten years, and I will definitely be able to kill ALS in seconds. ”
In an interview in 2022, Cai Lei also said something similar.
With the attitude of fighting the disease to the end, he began a new round of struggle.
There is a power called hope
"There is no 'one', I will create that 'one'. ”
When faced with the fact that "ALS cannot be cured", Cai Lei was desperate at first.
He resigned from JD.com and filed for divorce from his wife.
He didn't want to involve anyone, and he didn't want to see himself fail.
However, his wife did not hesitate to refuse his request for divorce.
She stepped down as vice president of JD.com and followed Cai Lei to join in the research and development of ALS drugs.
His wife's inseparability gave Cai Lei strength.
This elite in the field of finance and economics is ready to take on the challenge of a completely unfamiliar field of life sciences.
In three months, he read more than 1,000 papers on ALS by scholars around the world.
After having a certain understanding of ALS, he formed a scientific research team of more than a dozen people to specialize in this literature.
In November 2019, Cai Lei founded a medical technology company specializing in ALS.
The company's information aggregation platform has collected information on the condition of many ALS patients;
And real-time updates on the drug efficacy and disease course progress of these patients.
Today, the site is the world's largest non-governmental communication platform for ALS patients.
Because of this platform, Cai Lei has met many patients like him.
Cai Lei's research on ALS has also become their greatest hope.
Shouldering the expectations of so many people, Cai Lei did not dare to relax for a moment.
The torture of illness made him sleep only three or four hours a day, and when he opened his eyes, he began to work.
When he was busy at work, he had more than a dozen meetings.
These people connected with Cai Lei include pharmaceutical companies and scientists.
The high workload aggravated Cai Lei's condition, and his wife angrily accused him of committing suicide.
However, Cai Lei did not dare to stop his pace.
Because his current life is one day at a time, he must hurry.
He's in a race against time to find something useful before he dies.
Not just for himself, but also for people like him who have cancer.
In 2020, he found a collaboration with professors at the Institute of Neural Regeneration at Jinan University.
They set out to build an experimental platform for ALS drugs, and successively promoted the experiments of 5 drugs.
However, these studies require a lot of funding.
Cai Lei first took the lead in donating 1 million, and then began a fundraising roadshow to raise donations through the "Ice Bucket Challenge".
However, this series of fundraising activities has had little effect.
In order to continue to support the research of ALS, Cai Lei has stepped into a new field.
The power of "believing".
In 2022, Cai Lei will transform again and start live broadcasting.
However, his first live broadcast with goods did not work well.
He insisted on sitting for a few hours, but only sold more than 70,000 yuan, most of which was supported by friends and patients.
Seeing that the live broadcast room of "Icebreaker Station" has been losing money;
The wife resolutely gave up her job and devoted herself to the operation of the live broadcast room full-time.
The couple donated all their income for ALS research, and invested more than 17 million yuan before and after.
It was also in this year that Cai Lei signed an agreement to donate brain tissue and spinal cord tissue.
Under his leadership, more than 1,000 patients have signed donation agreements for scientific research.
In 2023, the first batch of drugs will be made.
Cai Lei served as a "guinea pig" and became the first batch of users.
Miraculous things happened, his body improved, his leg strength and speech function improved.
However, it was just a joke played by fate.
After taking medicine for a period of time, Cai Lei's physical condition took a 180-degree turn.
Not only is the effect of the medicine gone, but his condition is even worse than before.
It is really torture to give people hope first, and then drag them into the abyss.
Cai Lei was ridiculed by fate again and again, but he never gave up hope.
He published the book "Believe", telling his own experience of illness and life insights.
Cai Lei was confused and painful, but he chose to fight back.
At the end of the book, he writes like this.
"Believe in the power of 'believing'. ”
In January this year, Cai Lei and his wife announced that they would donate another 100 million yuan for ALS research.
Perhaps ALS left him with little time, but he left infinite hope for future generations.
epilogue
Life is like a practice, but Cai Lei's life is a little too hard.
However, he never gave in in the face of adversity, striving for hope for himself and giving strength.
A miracle doesn't have to happen today, but it is believed that it will come someday in the future.
(Disclaimer: The process and pictures described in the article are from the Internet, and this article aims to advocate positive social energy and no vulgar and other bad guidance.) If it involves copyright or character infringement issues, please contact us in time, and we will delete the content as soon as possible! ）
Source of this article
[1] "China News Network: Cai Lei, a ALS patient's "life to death"
[2] "China.com: Cai Lei's condition has worsened, his tongue and lower lip have atrophied, and the life fighter moves forward with tenacity"