Vice President Annette Lu (
"I was feeling pain from my back and my chest at around 7pm Thursday. I immediately called my medical team, and was sent to National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH)," said Lu, who celebrates her 60th birthday today, during the press conference.
PHOTO: CHIEN JONG-FENG, TAIPEI TIMES
"The doctors finished checking me quickly, and diagnosed my illness and suggested that my gall bladder be removed at 10pm. They then suggested that I should have surgery," Lu said.
Head of Lu's medical team Dr. Huang Tien-hsiang (
Huang pointed out that Lu had recovered well.
Lu also had a health checkup performed after the surgery. She was supposed to have had a checkup performed in April, but the plan was delayed due to the SARS outbreak. Huang said that her health report showed she was in good condition.
Lu, who had thyroid cancer 30 years ago, said that when she first had surgery to remove the cancer, she felt like she had gone to the next life when she had woken up after the thyroid surgery.
But because medical standards have improved over the past 30 years, Lu said she felt more comfortable having surgery a second time.
She encouraged the public to resume visiting hospitals if they were feeling sick.
She said there was no need to be scared of hospitals now that SARS is receding. She also urged patients to undergo surgery as soon as possible if doctors saw a need for it.
Her relationship with President Chen Shui-bian (
"After I arrived at the hospital, I called the president to ask him if he would mind if we faced each other with liver and gall [a Chinese idiom meaning facing each other openheartedly]."
"The president was surprised, and he offered to visit me right away," Lu said. Chen went to NTUH at around 8pm.
Chen met Lu again and presented her with a cake to wish her well at the press conference.
"Although we cannot continue to face each other with liver and gall, our hearts are still close," Chen said about Lu's comment.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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