In the past year, the topic of "stay-at-home children" has been in the spotlight, but when parents become seriously ill, the meaning of "stay-at-home children" becomes cruel.
From the moment they learned the news, the power relationship between parents and children was reversed in an instant: the fragile parents were cared for and protected, and the children had to change their original life plans, tie their future to their parents' old age, and bear the responsibilities of the family, bearing huge financial pressure and uncertainty.
Among this generation of "full-time children", due to the huge proportion of "only children", their situation is more extreme and similar, showing a strong sense of "community" and forming a unique intertextuality.
We spoke to three "stay-at-home children" who took time off work to care for seriously ill parents, and their stories began with a dilemma, they were dragged into a "war of attrition" with no end in sight, seeking a balance between filial piety and savings, and unfortunately, as time went on, they became more and more trapped in this invisible web and could not move.
"Have you calculated how much your mother spent on treatment?"
"I chose to run away."
"How long do you think this treatment will last?"
"I don't know." After saying that, the sigh fell to the ground, as if smashing a deep hole.
This year is the 5th year after Mingzhu's mother's stomach was completely cut. The 34-year-old was chained to her home and chopped up 24 hours a day.
The day that began at 7 a.m. was cut into 4 pieces by her mother's 3-hour meal, interspersed with infusions and dressings, and she couldn't count how many times a day she had to clean up her mother's vomit and clean up the kitchen. At 6 o'clock in the evening, after she took her daughter home, she hurried to the fast food restaurant to work the night shift, until she got off work at 2:30 in the morning, went home and slept for 4 hours, and the cycle of a new day began again.
Pearl and Mother
The mother's fragile body is the biggest variable.
After being diagnosed with gastric cancer five years ago, the cancer cells disappeared, but due to the difference in physical fitness, the complications of my mother were particularly serious. After gastric resection, the esophagus is directly connected to the duodenum, "like a water pipe without a valve, and as long as the person lies down, it is easy to reflux".
For 5 years, my mother could only sit and sleep, with her head down and her back stiff, and she never lay flat for a day.
Watch the lives of your dearest ones slip away little by little in front of you, and there's nothing you can do about it. The only thing she could do was give her mother an expensive nutrient – human blood albumin. According to the market, a bottle ranges from 400 yuan to 700 yuan, and the mother loses one bottle a day when her condition is at its worst.
The price of human albumin made Mingzhu's mother worried
The tube for infusion is similar to a large indwelling needle, a set of 600 yuan for domestic production, and a set of 2,000 yuan for imports.
She knew that sooner or later it would be a matter of both people and money, but she still had to go on.
Over the years, my father went to the construction site to work in order to subsidize the family, and in 2021, he fell off the scaffold, seriously injured his lumbar spine, and basically lost his ability to work. A year later, her father's condition improved slightly, and Mingzhu found a night shift job at a fast-food restaurant.
In the middle of the night, she sometimes thinks of the quiet year of 2018, when a year before her mother's illness, and a topic about buying commercial health insurance briefly appeared in the conversation between mother and daughter, and was quickly covered with trivia.
After the mother's illness, some insurance-related phrases often appear out of place in Mingzhu's life, "Some patients said that millions of medical insurance can reimburse the cost of human blood albumin, and some targeted drugs can also be reimbursed. But now it's too late to regret it. ”
Mingzhu said that the illness of parents is like a heavy rain, insurance is an umbrella, walking on the road in the rain is inevitably difficult, if there is an umbrella, maybe you can walk easier. After her mother fell ill, she prepared an "umbrella" for her daughter to buy various medical insurance on Alipay, but she had no umbrella to hold on, so she could only get into the rain again and again.
Pearl and Mother
When she met Harahara (not her real name), it was only more than 4 months since her father passed away from rectal cancer, but many of her memories were blurred, but she was very sure that her life had been completely changed by her father's cancer.
At the end of 2021, when she was 27 years old, she was working in Shanghai, 700 kilometers away from her hometown, and was the planning manager of a 4A advertising company.
She zoomed in on the upper edge of the picture and saw the name of a well-known tertiary hospital in the province, as well as the diagnosis of rectal cancer. And on the list of patients, the father's name is written impressively. At that moment, for the first time in her life, she experienced the feeling of the sky falling: her hands and feet were numb and trembling, and her whole body was dominated by violently fluctuating emotions.
She immediately took a week's leave, and when she arrived at the hospital, her father was leaning on the side of the bed and looking at the door of the ward. Although the man in front of him did not lose much weight, he was as old as a deflated breath. After his mother's unexpected early death, his father did not remarry, and there was only a father and daughter in the family, and he protected her under his wing for many years.
The singularity of the family structure implies the fragility of functioning. What used to be 100 percent love is now 100 percent responsible.
Her father's checklist, preoperative talks, and signatures shattered her life and future, and after the holidays, she had no choice but to quit her job and go home to take care of her father.
It was taken outside his father's operating room
Filial piety requires economic strength. Like many Shanghai drifters, Yuan Yuan didn't save money, and the 20,000 yuan in the card was transferred by her boyfriend after learning that her father was sick, and that was also the last time they were in contact, and after a short goodbye, her boyfriend left her world.
The huge expenses made her vigilant, and she recorded every medical expenditure in a notebook, just to know by heart.
In just 7 days, 150,000 yuan was consumed in the hospital. My father did not have commercial insurance, so at that time, he could only pay for medical insurance in other places first, and then go back to his hometown for reimbursement. Her father needed chemotherapy after surgery, and the doctor gave her two targeted drug options, both of which were one injection every three days, one for 600 yuan per injection, and the other was nearly 10 times the price, and the medical insurance could not reimburse her.
In desperation, she chose a cheaper one. She calculated that if she used an expensive plan, her family's savings might not last for 5 months. Harahara later regretted this decision countless times, and her father was diagnosed with metastasis half a year after surgery, and she suspected that it was because the best medicine was not used, but no one could verify it.
In the corner of the hospital, Yuan Yuan photographed a "black advertisement" for the high-priced recovery of targeted drugs
My father spent the last three months of his life in bed. Because of the difference between men and women, she originally thought about asking a nurse to take care of her, but the nurse's monthly salary was at least 5,000 yuan, and she couldn't afford it, so she had to do it herself. She prepares sick meals, changes diapers, pouches, and rubs talcum powder for her father every day.
In December 2023, the attending doctor found Harahara, and according to his judgment, Harahara's father's life was about to come to an end. In front of Yuan Yuan is the last choice about his father: one is to use an imported special drug, spend hundreds of thousands, and exchange his father for half a month; The other is to hurry home as soon as possible.
A nurse of some age suggested that she ask her father what he thought, but Harahara did not dare to ask and did not want to ask, so she chose the latter.
After sending his father away, Yuan Yuan was already 30 years old and sold the only old dilapidated child in the family, barely covering the debt. She tried to get back on track, but after 2 years away from a fast-changing industry, she knew she would never go back when she saw the eyes of her interviewer.
On Mother's Day a few days ago, there was a popular topic on social platforms #Hide from your mother to buy the most expensive thing.
33-year-old Xiao Jing (pseudonym) answered "anti-cancer drugs".
Three years ago, Xiao Jing's mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and the survival rate was determined by doctors to be 3 months.
Like many family members, Xiao Jing knew the truth earlier than her mother, who had never experienced anything major in her life, and she chose to keep her mother's illness a secret.
Xiao Jing's mother
While in the hospital, she discussed a clever narrative with the attending staff, describing "stage 4 pancreatic cancer" as a low-grade malignant transformation, somewhere between benign and malignant.
The words "confidential treatment" were written in advance on her mobile phone, and when she met an unfamiliar medical nurse, she turned her back and handed over the mobile phone, and the medical staff immediately understood. And all the checklists that may be exposed can only be handed over to Xiao Jing.
After being discharged from the hospital after surgery, Xiao Jing never let her mother go back to the countryside, cleaned up her social software, and prevented all relatives from revealing her condition to her mother. Even the proprietress of the mahjong parlor downstairs will greet card friends: play cards and play cards, don't mention illness to Xiao Jing's mother, otherwise her daughter will be angry.
Xiao Jing didn't even say how much money she spent on medicine, in case her mother guessed her condition through the cost of medicine. The most expensive drug my mother has ever used is nimotuzumab, which costs 1,435 yuan a piece, and has been treated for more than 20 courses in total, with a course of 8 and a total of 229,600 yuan.
Not only the cost of medicine, Xiao Jing has calculated that the total medical expenses in the past three years have been 1011750 yuan, the medical insurance reimbursement is 190,000 yuan, and the insurance claims on Alipay have been 31 times, with a total reimbursement of more than 760,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan at her own expense.
"Because there is insurance reimbursement, the actual cost is not much, so my mother has always thought that the money is not much, and believes that her condition is not serious. However, sometimes I suspect that I gave her cheap medicine, so she never recovered. Xiao Jing couldn't cry or laugh.
Xiao Jing lists her mother's medical bills
This insurance was purchased more than a year before her mother's illness, when Xiao Jing, who had been shopping online all year round, swiped an insurance called Good Medical Insurance on Alipay, and out of trust in Alipay, she bought one for the whole family. At that time, my mother was against it, believing that insurance was a fraud. But "whoever pays will listen to whomever pays", and the insurance was still purchased.
Because of the insurance cover, on the day she learned that her mother was sick, Xiao Jing took the high-speed train from Shenzhen back to Xiangtan. She didn't buy a return ticket that day, and she never returned to Shenzhen after that.
After resigning remotely, she took her mother to Shanghai to find the best doctors, regardless of the cost, and to choose the most advanced treatment options. "At that time, I felt that except for accompanying my mother to heal, nothing else mattered."
Xiao Jing at the Cancer Hospital
She had imagined what it would have been like if she hadn't insisted on buying the health insurance: If it hadn't been for it, my mom might have been gone. But now, if that day really comes, it doesn't matter, I've done everything I need to do, and all aspects are arranged decently, and I have no regrets.
After her mother fell ill, she configured more insurance for herself and her family on Alipay, "I want to deal with the uncertainty of life with dignity." ”
On Douban, there is a group called "One-Child Parents Pension Exchange Organization", which has more than 95,000 members. Behind the huge data, there is a specific and pessimistic mood of the times.
A reality that has to be faced is that this generation of only children always has an indelible exhaustion, they are anxious in the "social clock", struggling in the wave of housing prices, going back and forth between employment and unemployment, and the ensuing collective pressure pushes them to the long road of supporting the elderly.
Biologically speaking, cancer is a disease caused by the aging of the body and the failure of normal cell replication. Once the body ages, no one can avoid it 100%, so what else can we do in case this encounter comes?
A physical examination on time is the advice of every story protagonist, and "repairing the roof on a sunny day" can allow us to take the initiative in an inevitable dilemma. Behind the heavy medical insurance and critical illness insurance, it is about life security, money, and how the family can go on with dignity in the face of great uncertainty.