A 33-year-old terminal cancer patient from Hsinchu County recently decided to cease treatment and donate more than NT$1 million (US$31,000) -- money budgeted to pay for her medical bills -- to the county government to help build a foundation dedicated to aiding linguistically gifted but poor students.
Chou Pei-shan (周珮珊), a teacher at Chujen Elementary School in Chubei City, Hsinchu County, told the media at the Tri-Service General Hospital in Taipei City she hoped the foundation would help realize her wish to spark students' interest in the Chinese language and literature despite what she sees as a decline in the literacy of Taiwanese students at a time when an increasing number of people elsewhere are studying the language.
Chou was informed she had colorectal cancer two years ago, shortly after receiving her master's degree in language education from National Taichung University.
She was told she had only six months to live, Chou said. "But my family didn't give up on me."
Chou has tried every kind of treatment, including "natural killer cell" therapy costing NT$30,000 per treatment.
"I received that therapy three times," Chou said. "I have taken more than 900 portions of Chinese herbal medicine and over 100 bottles of liquefied nutrients."
"I have had 10 major surgical operations and endless courses of chemotherapy," Chou said.
Chou was recently advised to cease chemotherapy because she had become too weak to endure the cell-damaging treatment.
"Now my parents and I are well prepared to face my death," she said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
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