Because he learned that he was suffering from a rare gradual freezing disease (ALS), countless patients suffered from gradual freezing until they died.
After countless hospitals in Cai Lei failed to get effective treatment, he decided to fight the disease for the rest of his life. ...
August 20 18, Cai Lei just finished a busy day's work and was about to go home from work. When he picked up the bag, he found that his left forearm jumped unconsciously.
At first, Cai Lei thought he was just too tired from work recently. He was going to treat him like a migraine before, and a few days' rest may pass.
But to Cai Lei's surprise, this kind of jumping meat lasted for half a year, and his family was really uneasy, so he advised him to go to the hospital for a check-up.
Cai Lei finally found a day off to have a check-up. After the results came out, the doctor gave him a preliminary judgment that it might be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, that is, "gradually frozen people."
Cai Lei with the report couldn't believe what the doctor said was like a bomb. Medical experts told him to go to Beijing Third Hospital for reexamination.
It would be nice if motor neuron disease could be ruled out. Although Cai Lei's left arm muscle has begun to atrophy, Cai Lei still holds a glimmer of hope.
Cai Lei stayed in the Beijing Third Hospital for four weeks. Check every day, and finally diagnosed as a "gradually frozen person."
"Then am I going to die?" When asked about this sentence, Cai Lei's voice trembled. The doctor told me that people who are gradually frozen usually have a shrinking period of two to five years.
The gradual freezing disease ranks first among the five terminal diseases in the world, followed by cancer and AIDS. Although its clinical manifestation is only muscle atrophy, it is more difficult. After all, other terminal diseases have gradually eased or even been basically cured.
Not only is there no effective treatment for people who are gradually freezing, but even the drugs for treating this disease have not made a major breakthrough for decades. For those who suffer from it, the only thing they can do seems to be to welcome the end.
After listening to the doctor's introduction to the frozen man, Cai Lei seems to have lost all his vitality, his brain is buzzing and he can hardly stand. Looking back, he worked hard. In the ten years since he joined JD.COM, Cai Lei hardly took a day off.
Cai Lei was born in Shangqiu, Henan Province, and he was very smart since he was a child. His father was a soldier and was very strict with him since he was a child.
Therefore, I am often among the best in school, but I seldom make friends with others. It was not until he was admitted to the Central University of Finance and Economics that he gradually got his own circle of friends.
After he was admitted to the university, his father became ill. Cai Lei dropped out of school and went to the hospital to take care of his father with liver cirrhosis.
This is the first time Cai Lei has been so close to the disease. At night, Cai Lei is often awakened by his father's cough several times. During the day, he helps his father turn over every twenty minutes.
Despite all Cai Lei's efforts for his family, his father failed to survive at the age of 47, and his early death made the already poor family worse.
When he first entered the society, Cai Lei's salary was not high, but he worked in an organization. His girlfriend abandoned him because his salary was too low.
Cai Lei, who was badly hit, jumped ship and went to Vanke. Since then, she has been working hard day and night in the workplace.
In order to give itself a brighter future, Cai Lei has no resources and can only work hard on its own. Therefore, in the eyes of others, "workaholic" just doesn't want to be a person with mediocre fighting spirit, step by step.
On 20 1 1 year, Cai Lei took the post of Vanke executive, but at this time, he chose to quit his job and went to JD.COM, where he just started his business, because the Internet had already shown the general trend, and Cai Lei took a fancy to it.
When I arrived in JD.COM, although my salary dropped a lot, Cai Lei was still in a state of despair. In the past ten years, JD.COM has been growing, and so has he.
Finally, with a series of achievements, I firmly sat in JD's position. The vice president of COM. Cai Lei was only in his thirties at this time, and how successful he was.
But when he was in his thirties, he thought he was young and strong, and he had not been to the hospital for examination for six or seven years. His efforts have also made his achievements in the field of Internet a winner in life.
But these things have lost their meaning for him at this moment. On the day of diagnosis, his heart was only pain and despair. A voice kept asking, "Why me?"
Compared with waiting for death, Cai Lei chose to race against time. Since 20 19, Cai Lei has been running between major hospitals in China, just to seek a way to treat himself.
Cai Lei has tried Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Tiantan Hospital and xuanwu hospital as long as they are famous big hospitals in China, but they can't be cured.
Desperate, Cai Lei even began to look for Mr. Feng Shui in the street. Mr. Feng Shui asked him to move out of his present home, and so did he.
Looking for the so-called "magic doctor" among the people, the "magic doctor" gave him a dose of "magic medicine", but it still had no effect. Then he found imported medicine for injection from abroad and burned it to 39 degrees.
Finally, Cai Lei chose to return to the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University for hospitalization. Among the patients hospitalized in the same period as Cai Lei, Cai Lei's condition was stable, and others even became extravagant hopes.
One-third of the patients before him have died of illness, and it seems that all he can do is meet death.
During his six months in hospital, Cai Lei suffered from insomnia almost every night. Comfort from his family and encouragement from his friends were of no help.
Cai Lei told reporters that at that time, he could only relieve some pain at work, and after lying down, fear and anxiety would follow.
After his illness, his wife Duan Rui visited him in the hospital every day besides accompanying his newborn child. Cai Lei in the ward told Duan Rui that he wanted a divorce.
The man who used to be in high spirits has lost confidence in everything now. He was worried that his wife would abandon him first, so he wanted to take the lead in filing for divorce, so that Duan Rui wouldn't have a psychological burden.
They lived a happy life before the illness came. They met on a blind date. Duan Rui is younger than Cai Lei 1 1 year. It is not an exaggeration to describe the speed at which they entered the marriage hall hand in hand.
At that time, Cai Lei left only one sentence, if he thought the two were appropriate, he would not waste time. After only knowing each other for a month or two, Duan Rui also found that he and Cai Lei had the same three views, so he got married and had a son soon after marriage.
But just a few months after the baby was born, Cai Lei suffered this misfortune. In the face of Cai Lei's divorce, Duan Rui loudly refused.
Sad Duan Rui told Cai Lei with tears on her face: "Don't think about divorce." Even though Cai Lei may not see the sun every day, his wife still chose to stay with him and fight the disease with him, but Cai Lei didn't cheer up.
In the hospital, Cai Lei met many patients. There are already more than a dozen patients in the mobile phone, and there are thousands of patients. This used to be a distant topic for Cai Lei, but now it has become something to be mentioned every day.
A patient complained in the group and wanted to commit suicide by drinking pesticides, but the pesticides were in front of him and he couldn't pick them up.
For them, falling down at an early date is a relief for themselves and their families. The more you look at this topic, the more Cai Lei loses hope in life.
Sometimes he stands at the window of the ward and looks at the pedestrians in the street below. People come and go, all kinds of people, old ladies picking up rubbish in garbage dumps, and disabled people with crutches have all become the envy of Cai Lei.
In order to have the hope of living, Cai Lei even wants to be an experimenter of experimental drugs, and he has been vaccinated with various experimental drugs for several days, keeping Cai Lei on the verge of death.
Once he did a lumbar puncture, and as a result, he touched the lumbar nerve, and the whole lower body was numb and hurt directly. At that moment, Cai Lei really died.
As time went on, Cai Lei's health went from bad to worse. But among the patients in the same period, he is still good, and some patients have passed away.
Cai Lei witnessed the death of one patient after another. He became calm and used to life and death. Cai Lei is ready to die.
On this day, Cai Lei went for a routine physical examination as usual, and was found to have a malignant tumor in his body, which means that the cause of Cai Lei may be a malignant tumor.
Compared with direct suffering from gradual freezing, gradual freezing caused by malignant tumor is also a terminal disease, but it is not hopeless.
In the ward, the patients cheered for Cai Lei, and Cai Lei was greatly shocked by the cheering scene. Although they also stepped into the grave with one foot, it still did not prevent them from being happy that their friends around them had a chance to be saved.
An aunt repeatedly asked to be a planer. She told Cai Lei that they were young and the pillars of society. Under the influence of this atmosphere, Cai Lei decided to embark on the journey of fighting the disease again.
At present, there is only one "specific medicine" in the world, that is, a pill called Lirutai. The price is not cheap at around 4000 yuan per box, even in Beijing with good medical insurance conditions, only 50% can be reimbursed.
Take a box of this medicine every month, and it will take a year and a half to extend the time by 2-3 months. For Cai Lei, the cost of medicine is only 95 cents.
But what caught his attention was, why are there so few specific drugs for treating gradual freezing? With this question, he began to look up the information himself.
Nervous system diseases are the most mysterious diseases of human beings, and the research and development of many drugs can only be explored by guessing.
Just like many drugs used in the study of gradually frozen people failed in the early stage, even after the drug research of gradually frozen people came out, few people would buy it at a high price.
Therefore, investors won't be foolish enough to put their money in for nothing, and Cai Lei is willing to be that fool.
When asked why he started to develop drugs to treat gradual freezing, Cai Lei replied:
Maybe God made him suffer from this disease just to give him such a mission.
According to the survey in Cai Lei, although there are 3,000 patients with gradual freezing in the Third Hospital of Beijing Medical University, these are only nine Niu Yi hairs, and there are 26,000 new patients in China every year.
For doctors, Cai Lei learned that it is difficult for many doctors to see a patient who is gradually freezing all their lives. If they are committed to the research and development of drugs for gradually freezing people, they may not achieve anything in their lifetime. All kinds of factors add up to make many medical experts flinch.
First, Cai Lei set up a medical technology company, focusing on the research of gradual freezing.
In order to enable the research team to grasp the patient's information timely and accurately, Cai Lei broke the traditional medical information barrier and established a patient research database by using his existing patient group.
This process is not easy. The first step is to fill in the questionnaire. Many patients think Cai Lei is a liar, so they want to discredit him.
Cai Lei telephoned one after another, and the longest one even took a day. This way of establishing patient scientific research database is extremely effective, breaking the barriers among patients, doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.
In order to achieve all this, Cai Lei has made disproportionate efforts, although Cai Lei is a successful person with connections and resources.
However, once divorced from the interests, this kind of contacts and resources will become precarious. In order to promote the establishment of companies and scientific research institutions, Cai Lei dragged himself back to the business world.
For Cai Lei, just establishing a medical technology company is not enough. According to past experience, Cai Lei chose to find someone to finance.
But this is an area that has not been broken through for decades, and few people are optimistic about Cai Lei's projects. What's more, even if a specific drug is developed to treat people who are gradually freezing, how much profit can it bring back?
Just as many people question why the prices of some terminally ill drugs are too high for people to afford, in fact, the research and development costs of these drugs are hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, so many pharmaceutical companies are intimidated by high costs and low users.
In order to convince investors and related pharmaceutical companies, Cai Lei tried to convince them with his own words.
He told People magazine that 20,000 to 30,000 athletes in China suffer from mental illness every year, and most of them are between 40 and 60 years old. They are the pillars of the family, and once they have drugs to treat diseases, they will definitely choose to buy them.
If it spreads to the global market, it is estimated that there will be a return of 500 billion yuan, not to mention the increase of ALS patients every year.
For Cai Lei's rhetoric, some people will directly refute his idiot, some people refuse to talk about it next time, and some even tell Cai Lei to donate 5 million yuan to him and stop doing it.
At the end of a day's work, Cai Lei, sitting in the car, began to cry sadly, as if she had returned to the hardships of starting a business, even though her right hand could no longer hold her mobile phone.
However, he will still share his day's progress among patients and hope to influence more people with his optimism. Without investment, Cai Lei used the most primitive method-fundraising.
The form of fundraising is an ice bucket challenge, but the harvest is very small. Unwilling, Cai Lei made a second donation, taking the lead in donating one million yuan, but in the end only a few hundred thousand more.
Although he experienced many failures, it didn't frighten Cai Lei. In the past two years, Cai Lei has been devoting himself to his work, as if he had regained his enthusiasm for his work.
The world's largest private database was born from him, and he also set up a charitable foundation to promote the research and development of drugs for treating gradual freezing.
No one invested, so Cai Lei filled it with his own money. So far, Cai Lei has invested tens of millions of yuan in this field, although it is still far from the initial cost of drug research and development.
However, Cai Lei is still making efforts to narrow this distance. Some people compared him to Don Quixote who fought in a windmill, but Cai Lei didn't think so. He thought he was waiting for the Monkey King to break the stone, only for an earth-shattering day.
By the end of 2020, Cai Lei's right hand muscle has also begun to atrophy, and his left arm has completely lost its strength.
It's hard to even lift chopsticks when eating. In an interview with a reporter from China Youth Network, although Cai Lei's arms were morbid, the whole person showed a confident spirit.
2002/KLOC-At the end of October/September, Cai Lei was photographed by a reporter while undergoing a general examination at Capital Medical University. In the photo, Cai Lei needs the help of an assistant to drink water. Despite this difficulty, Cai Lei's journey of lighting up frozen life has not stopped.
In his own words, the road to terminal illness is half starved to death and half scared to death, and he will face death calmly.
Even if there is no hope in the future, he can stand on tiptoe to find hope. Even if he may fall down tomorrow, he is willing to gamble for himself and the patients with gradual freezing.
There are lovers cheering for him, and thousands of patients cheering for him behind him, which is the source of Cai Lei's strength.
Although he is seriously ill, he can "burn" himself and light the way for countless patients. This is his greatest success. May he overcome the disease as soon as possible and light up the frozen life.
[1] Times Post, No.23, 202 1, Cai Lei, Vice President of JD.COM. COM: after life freezes.
[2] China Net March 23, 202 1 "A desperate race of JD.COM executives: he is gradually frozen, and he wants to save more people."
[3] qianjiang evening news, 202 1, 14, From Vice President JD.COM to Frozen Patient: Cai Lei's Midfield War.