The Starting Point of My Medical Profession
Memories of My Mother, Part III

The Meaning of Living:
Defying the prediction of her doctor that she would not be able to get back home by herself, she did manage it. Almost without exception, the hospitalized people yearn to get back home, I’m sure. After coming home, my mother uttered some words, expressing not only her joy, but also her readiness to face death. Once born, all of us are destined to die regardless of our positions or statuses. But, while young, not very many realize this inevitability.
How we live each day, what we are going to leave behind when we are gone; these are unavoidable questions for us Homo sapiens that are all destined to die someday. In the letters she wrote to the people of the same profession, my mother indicated her readiness to face death by saying, for instance: “It is my mission to keep advocating this preventive medicine, no matter what…,” “I’m determined to live through my whole life with conviction without being bothered by critical voices of others…,” or “All of us human beings live to prepare for death….” Thus, she always lived her life, based on her strong conviction and gazing at her own approaching death.
Her conviction was that we should learn useful meanings from everything, including illness. Her conviction was shared by me, for we knew that anything and everything that happens and exists in the universe has a meaning. So, what happened in our lives had some great meaning to us, we believed.

Coming in Touch with People’s Souls:
A few days before her death, when she was no longer able to communicate, I noticed her mouth moving as if to say, “Arigato, arigato (thank you, thank you)” unflinchingly. I knew her death was just around the corner, and did my best to relieve her feelings and help her feel completely at ease.
One night, as I was massaging her arms, she mumbled, “I feel no pain at all…. What wonderful hands you have!” She looked happy. How should I touch my patients, and in what state of mind? Is my mind totally clean of impurity? Only through a mind of absolute unselfishness, we can reach the depth of our patients’ souls. This is and should be the starting point of my medical profession.

Struggling with Severe Pain:
In May 2004, six months before my mother’s death, she and I made a trip to South Korea. She was so fascinated by the popular Korean drama “Ho Jun” that she had wanted for long to visit Korea sometime in her life. We had our photo taken in front of the statue of Ho Jun examining a young girl. My mother was mesmerized, gazing at his affectionate eyes and plump hands.
At that time, she was already suffering from hard pain from cancer. Right after returning from Korea the pain in the abdomen, back and legs grew so serious that she could not handle her work. She visited one hospital after another to have the condition examined. At the first hospital, heart trouble was suspected and cardiovascular check up was made at large hospitals, too. Electrocardiograms and blood tests revealed nothing wrong, however. Finally they diagnosed her with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS). In June, the pain grew worse. My brother and I took turns giving her acupuncture treatment and applied frozen wet towels to her back and abdomen every five minutes or so all night until my hands began to get blistered. Behind the pancreas, which is located right behind the stomach, is an abdominal nervous system. Her cancer had spread to this area. The pain must have been unbearable, but my mother’s perseverance was indefatigable.

Serious Fight Against Illness:
Four months later, it was confirmed at a neighboring clinic that my mother had cancer of the pancreas. It was a month and a half before her death.
About 20 years ago, when she was living a most hectic life, she was hospitalized for the first time in her life for an inflammation of the pancreas. Although at that time a suspicious image of tumor was observed, it was gone in the subsequent check-up. She was released a few days afterward, but it was actually the beginning of the malignant stage of cancer, the doctor opined.
The hateful fact of cancer is that it causes severe pains. It mercilessly grows and gnaws into the body, but I strongly believe that the spiritual power of a human being is strong enough to fight against it and is never affected in the least by its spread. The precious experiences I had during my life with my mother at the hospital for a month and a half are deeply inculcated in my mind; so much so that I cannot cover them in this page.
The cancer spread to the liver, lungs, kidneys and everywhere in her body. My brother and I kept giving her acupuncture treatment at the hospital under the guidance of my mentor. Her hospital doctor kindly advised us to do so, for he knew that there was no longer any cure to be offered by occidental medicine.

The Rhythm of the Universe:
At the hospital, my mother’s ferocious fight against cancer strangely produced a humorous atmosphere accompanied by occasional outbursts of laughter. Each word uttered by her made people around her smile and laugh. Although she herself was no longer able to eat anything, she showed thought to my meals and said, “When I’m home, I’ll prepare food for you that will make you intelligent.” Later, I found a cookbook on her bookshelf titled “Food That Makes You Intelligent,” and I smiled to myself.
Why could she remain so cheerful and induce laughter, while suffering so much physically? On the day when her cancer was discovered, I began to feel that my whole self was being absorbed into the rhythm of the universe. It was September 30th.
The “Rhythm of the Universe” meant riding on the universal rhythm under any circumstances, forging naturally ahead toward “good.” It was a completely honest, though a bit imprudent, expression of my feeling at the time.
Although my mother’s continued struggle caused me to suffer bitterly, too, both mentally and physically, things began to work in the best direction for her, which filled my heart with boundless gratitude for the blessing gained from the “Rhythm of the Universe.”

Memories of My Mother:
November 26th is the 7th anniversary of my mother’s death, which I consider to be the Starting Point of my medical profession inherited from my acupuncture-moxibustion specialist mother. Not even a day has gone when I did not think of her since her passing. What is more, I always feel that she is with me when I give treatment to my patients. I owe my mother for everything that I am and have today. And for the coming month, I wish to remember my mother by committing my memories of her to writing. What I learned from her is the starting point of my medical profession. October is the month in which I was born. So, I wish to get back to the starting point as the basis of my pursuit of this medical profession through my writing which helps me reaffirm my determination.

No Compromise in Life:
My mother was born in the first decade of the Showa era, which we commonly call “The One Digit generation of the Showa era.” Her father had practiced acupuncture-moxibustion treatment for a long time in Fukushima Prefecture. She owed it to him that she was able to acquire a license to practice the same profession at the age of 17. Thus, she worked under the strict guidance of her father. She loved reading and acupuncture practice, which were her only interests in life. So much so that she was considered a sort of “square” by her sisters. But in my eyes, she was remarkably capable of handling more than one thing at a time. She was always studying acupuncture and moxibustion while listening to music on the radio or watching TV. Once she asked me while watching TV, “Do you know why this ramen-shop is so popular?” She answered her own question and said, “That’s because the master never makes any compromise on the taste,” though she had never eaten the ramen at the shop. “Oh, yah?” I casually responded. I then realized that making no compromise in the way one handles one’s business is not such a simple thing. She, too, made no compromise and was so dedicated to her work as listening to her mentor’s taped lectures before dropping off to sleep or keeping his book in hands in bed.

Maintaining a Consistent Attitude:
My mother maintained an unbelievably consistent stance toward all her patients, always giving thought to how to make their lives easier and more comfortable. I have heard many touching words from her ex-patients about how thoughtful she was when looking after them. Not a few of them say that visiting Nishinomiya brings back vivid memories of my mother and tears to their eyes. Now I have a patient who frequently suffered from brain infarctions after my mother died. She sees me now for treatment and she has had no relapse of the problem.
Last year, a man who was one of my mother’s patients came to me from Kyoto. He put himself to bed for treatment. When I entered the room, he was putting his hands to his eyes to control his tears. I asked him what he was crying about. He said, “Your voice sounds like your mother’s, and made me imagine as if Kazu-Sensei was back here.” The man, now 95, who had hit it off so well with my mother Kazu, remembered her and saw her at my side and choked back tears. He is just as thoughtful about my health as he was about my mother’s. Thus, even after passing away, my mother is loved so much by many as she was in life. What happiness, indeed!

Her Letters to Patients … She was always looking at her ways of living:
As I was going through things left by my mother 6 years ago, I saw so many notes and memorandums written by her. They filled almost 10 cardboard boxes. I was reminded of her words that she was committing every important piece of professional information to paper. Writing was the best way to learn, she used to say. What surprised me more was an uncountable number of encouraging letters she wrote to her patients, in which she expressed her honest thoughts, ideas and opinions. Some of these letters, written by hand, are back in my hands now. They make me realize anew that she was always trying to confirm and reconfirm if her heart and mind were pure and clean in the strictest sense of the term. A couple of examples: “I want to live, always trying to correct my course of life…,” “What shocks me in a crushing sense of defeat comes when I realize I am still unable to change my mind’s impurity….” Thus, even after she turned 60, she was still challenging herself and trying for her self-revolution. In one letter that she wrote a year before her death, she says: “As compared with the eternity of life, one’s own lifetime lasts only a short period. I’m living this short period to the fullest extent of my strength in order to win another victorious life. So, I will give myself in its entirety to acupuncture practice again from tomorrow.” To me, it sounds like some unforgettable lines from a movie! I’m sure that it was her patients who thus kept giving constant encouragement to my mother.