Yesterday I spent a whole day at hospital, from 10:00 am to 17:00 pm, finishing a mission impossible---to buy the medicine I need to curb my cancer.

“How hard could it be?”” You are thinking too much.” “You complicate things, like always. “Before we go to the hospital, my husband murmured. I decided to hold my tongue, but inside, I sneered: “You would know!”

To make it clear, it’s not always so difficult to buy my medicine. But it’s one of those special medicines, and my approval for it is expired, so I need to renew it. That’s the problem. I was hit by a wave of nauseates when I thought about the laborious procedure we need to go through. I checked all those files: CT, medical records, prescriptions and tried to comfort myself: We could do it. It just needs a long time’s waiting in line. That’s all.

I prepared for everything except one: I need a medical certification to prove that I got cancer. I have one, but it is also expired. Funny, the first day when I was diagnosed with the stage four cancer, I was informed that I have to live with my cancer for the rest of life. Obviously, my cancer will not be expired, but my certification for it will.

And all of my health checks, CT, MRI, PET/CT results, my recently prescriptions, as well as a stack of medical records can’t prove that----I need my doctor to issue a certification for it. At first, I thought it won’t be a problem. I have a whole set of medical records in the hospital’s system, so any doctor in Breast Cancer department can issue this for me. All I need is to make an arrangement on spot—that’s how I got my expired certification in the first place. But again, the worst thing happened! The hospital changed the rule: No on-spot arrangement is allowed! I need to make an arrangement in the hospital’s APP. I checked it, and no arrangement is available within two weeks! But I had only one day’s medicine left.

You might wonder, why should not go to the hospital earlier? First, you can’t renew an approval before it is expired. Second, the window for this prescription only opens on every Tuesday’s morning. Third, nobody tells me that my medical certification will expire.

This medicine for me is like Insulin to a diabetic. I can’t take the risks of not taking it for two weeks. The only option, also the last thing I want to do in the world, is to beg my doctor for her mercy. I tried to contact her, through Wechat, through online consultation, through everything I could think of, and unsurprisingly, all I got is extremely polite, extremely cold and heartless and definite: NO. There is nothing I can do about it.

My husband finally snapped and flied into a temper. We are hungry, exhausted, and got sick of being shuffled from here to there. He actually made a scene about it. Guess what? Miracle happens. It turns out that you can have an on-spot arrangement, just not through a civilized way but a barbaric way instead ---to yell, to threat, to make a scene. Nice, polite talks don’t stand a chance here.

I hate confrontations, I hate public scene. But this time I didn’t feel ashamed about it---I mean, really what else option do we have?