[ChosunIlbo] "I am terminal cancer patient" ride bike to become a talk

“Thank Cancer”, 60-year-old Kim Sunwook says, 

“People work so hard to survive in this competitive society without having any fun, but end up with ill or just feeling empty inside… now I have come to find that my life that my life is worth living, even after being diagnosed with cancer.”

A wife who had taken care of a sick ex-husband for 14 years, now this… 

She married Kim Sunwook after her ex-husband died. What a fate!  But it was this wife that encouraged her helpless husband to keep his promise: to travel and bike around the world after retirement.

Ok, let’s start traveling around this country first, 

from the northern tip of South Korea to the top of Mt. Halla, which is the other end of the nation, for six months. Then, travel to Japan and to Australia… Hoping to build a foundation for cancer patients, following in the footsteps of the Canadian Terry Fox, who did a marathon with prosthetic leg.

 

“Yes, I have stage 4 lung cancer.” His way of plainly stating his condition sounded like talking to an old classmate at an alumni gathering. “My wife says to me, ‘Cancer is not a thing to boast about.’ Because I always recite it whenever I meet people” he said. He doesn’t hide his illness. He repeats “I thank cancer” and “Cancer is my friend” This guy, almost in his sixties, is going on a bike trip throughout the country along with ‘my grateful mate, cancer’. Starting from Imjingak through Goseong in Gangwon-do, he will tread the country zigzaging from the East to the West, until reaching 7,000 km after six months of pedaling on his two wheels.

On this trek, his wife Park Jaeran will accompany him. It is the first time for both of them to ride bicycles since their middle school days. They will also meet cancer patients around the country with the message that he is living energetically, even in the last stage of cancer, so take courage!

A reporter interviewed the couple at a coffee shop in Hannam-dong last May 23.

- Did you need to train to ride a bicycle?

“Yes, I’ve been practicing two hours every day for 7 weeks. The training session is almost done. I have a skiing instructor's license, which means I am confident in skiing. It was possible because I was taught all the fundamentals by a master teacher. So, now I am also being trained for this bike trek with a professional instructor.”    

He lived in Australia for a long time and there he enjoyed skiing, not on tourist slopes but on snowy mountains. He experienced a meditative mood through extreme sports in nature. Now he is expecting transcendental fruits from bike riding.

- When are you going to start?

“I will have a kick-off party on April 28, having an official ceremony makes me renew my resolution and see my responsibilities. I start at Imjingak on the morning of May 1st”

- Are only the two of you going?

“No, a road manager and a travel writer will go along with us, following us in a car. We will publish a book.” He already made a homepage for his bike travel, ‘www.cyclign4cure.com’, which means cycling for cure.  Via this homepage he will invite volunteers to cycle with him along the way for awhile, and he will encourage supporters to pledge money based on his mileage. He said “If I aimed for a hundred thousand sponsors and they committed to donate ten won per 1 km, 70.000 won each person, it would be enough for a cancer foundation like Lance Armstrong's.

- How could a person with stage 4 lung cancer plan to travel around the country by bike?

“My wife and I used to talk about retirement plans to travel around the world biking. We were planning to travel around Europe, starting in the Netherlands, but I got cancer. Taking severe anti-cancer treatments, I lay in bed helplessly. One day his wife said ‘Honey shall we start to riding our bikes now, as we planned?’ So we did!” 

He was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in November 11 of 2010. About a month before the diagnosis, he felt something heavy in his chest all of sudden on the way home from work. He went to see a GP. The doctor prescribed indigestion medicine assuming gastric acid reflux. But it did not work. The heavy pain was so severe that he could neither lie down nor sit up. He went to the hospital for an urgent surgery to remove the water spilling into his heart valve. Then, he got the diagnosis of lung cancer. 

“When the doctor gave me the cancer diagnosis, he just said it drily, looking at the computer monitor. The situation was not dramatic or pathetic, like in the movies.  The Doctor told me that it was too late for surgery and that nothing could be done but taking anti-cancer treatments.  He kept explaining the side effects, but I could not hear anything. I felt as if I had been floundering in the air, falling down slowly from a cliff.”

- You don’t look sick, judging from your face and the appearance. 

“When people are diagnosed with caner, at first they feel panic. Next, they get depressed, and then the stage of compromise comes. This stage is very hard to go through. They lose all interest and desire for anything, paralyzed in lethargy. Anti-cancer treatments kill some nerves in the body, which takes away . This vicious cycle keeps the patients' appetites, leaving them helpless. So the last thing they have to do to get out of this pattern is to hold onto their will to live. If they lose this, they die, energy and strength depleted.”

- How have you regained the will to live? 

“With my wife's encouragment, I started going on walks. It was March of last year (2011). Taking a walk,  I found new buds sprouting from the frozen earth. They awakened me to the rewarding sense that peace comes after a long pain.” 

“The bigger the panic or pain after the diagnosis is, the greater the peace you will get after the struggle ends. When we were hiking at Mt Bukhan, my wife brought out the issue of our long-sought dream, going on the bike trip.”

They married in 2007. It was the first marriage for Kim Sunwook. Park Jaeran remarried after her ex-husband died of a diabetes-related disease. She had waited on her sick husband for 14 years. She said “When my new husband was also diagnosed in the terminal stage of cancer, to be honest, I felt as if I had been cursed. I was very frustrated with the fate that I have had to take care of sick husbands.” 

- At first you planned to travel across the US by bike?

“Yes, the initial plan was to travel across the US by bike. But I was told I have only a 10 % to live till the year 2014. The doctor advised to do it inside Korea since there is not much time left… hahaha”

They plan to tread the country on the two wheels for six months. The finishing line will be put at the peak of Halla Mountain in Jeju. They will be pedaling at a pace of 10-15 km/h for a distance 50km a day. They will be camping in a tent, not accepting more expensive accommodations whenever possible. “For us to ride a bike means to assimilate ourselves to nature, and in this vein we will camp out in tents. In cases of extreme weather, we will utilize a simple jjimjilbang (Korean style spa)”       

- How is your physical condition?

“I never ask the doctor how extensively the cancer has spread or how big the tumor is. Even if I know the truth, what can I do? All I can do is to think positively. People are stressed when their emotions do not line up with their reasoning. I feel that I have no problems, even though I am aware that I am a cancer patient. I try to forget that fact. They say the chance that I survive until 2014 is only 10 %, but if I will have been still alive then, I won’t see a 10 % chance of life, just 100 % of my remaining days.” 

He had an exercise tolerance test at SNU Hospital on 9th March, and the result was 167 watts, which is 139% of the average index of a 60 year-old man. When he did it again 18th March, it increased to 201 watts. People in the hospital said with surprise, “How come a cancer patient is getting stronger and stronger?” “I think 20% of cancer is cured by the doctor and the rest of the 80% other 80% is done by the patient with his or her own will,” he said.     

- You quit your job because of the bike trip?

 

“Yes, I resigned my post as the head of the labor officer at the Sri Lankan embassy in Korea at the end of last February. It is solely for the bike trip. Looking back on my life, I think I have lived recklessly. My first job was working for a branch of a Japanese trading company. Then I started my own business importing so called ‘luxury goods’, like carpets and furniture, and it brought me a fortune.” 

“When the Fifth Republic regime attained political power, it denounced this kind of business as overly lavish, to be abolished from society. So I had to close it down and move to Australia. There, I was swindled by my business partner. I became desperately broke. So I had to work from scratch, laboring, like cleaning buildings as an illegal worker. Then, I rose again. During these hard times I realized the most precious thing in life.” 

- What is it?

“It is just fun. Hanging out with folks from different cultures in a foreign country, I could learn how to enjoy life. Then I came to believe that the first thing to pursue in our life is fun. In fact, it would be impossible to fight against cancer without feeling fun. This is a pun I made for fun, here is letter ‘C’ out of the word ‘cancer’, add it to ‘fun’ then ‘-tion’ at the end for making it a noun. It becomes ‘function’, which means where there is fun, function follows. I used to lead a busy, task-oriented life: whatever I did, or whomever I met, I calculated the benefits I could gain. I didn’t feel the necessity to reflect on myself, or what I am. In that regard, I am now grateful for the cancer for changing my attitude towards life.     

 

- What do you mean by ‘grateful for cancer’?

 

“The cancer made it possible for me to look back on my life and reorient it. Now l am living my own life, led by myself, not just following others, like so many people do. Recently, when I encounter people, I try to see his or her good points. I have become much more positive than before I got cancer. The more one has accomplished in life, the more he or she is shocked with cancer diagnosis. Imagine there is a person who had lived tooth and nail to get more without having any fun, at thatmoment he or she would think ‘I've had enough, now it’s time to enjoy life’, then diagnosed with terminal disease, the person would become completely exasperated.”

 

- So are you planning to establish a Bike Foundation?

 

“Yes, a Canadian guy, named Terry Fox who had a leg amputated due to osteosarcoma, finished a marathon with his prosthesis. When he announced that he would run for other cancer patients, most people were skeptical. But eventually, more and more people were moved by his hope-sharing, and the funds raised exceed five hundred million dollars. Some cancer patients get so frustrated that they tend to disconnect from their relationships. I rather hope to find a way to be involved with more people instead of being isolated; by helping the most desperate to be strengthened, for example, building a foundation for raising funds for the children of cancer parents.

- Tell me more about your future plans.

 

After the nation-traversing is done, I will go on a trip to Japan for 7-8 months next year, then a year in America then Australia and Europe. Whatever happens, I will never simply lay on my bed. I will go out shouting “I am the cancer guy”. What is funny is that every time I pronounce that I am a cancer man, I feel like cancer is not such a big deal, like it's somebody else’s problem. And I am sure that someday, all of sudden, this cancer will be gone like a wind in the air. 

[ChosunIlbo] "I am terminal cancer patient" ride bike to become a talk

The Chosun Ilbo, 28th Apr.2012[한국어 기사 보기]