Hong Hae-In has everything as the chaebol daughter of the Queens Group. However, apart from estranged relationships with her family and a shaky marriage, she has also contracted an extremely rare disease that has left her days on Earth numbered.
Queen of Tears follows Baek Hyun-Woo, the legal director of the Queens Group, and his wife Hong Hae-In, the chaebol heiress who’s known as the queen of the Queen’s Department Store.
She has been suffering from a rare disease for a while and in a world where everyone, even her own family, seems to be rooting for her downfall, she needs a miracle and true support to overcome this hopeless challenge.
The symptoms & effects
Sometimes, Hong Hae-In suffers from headaches and is forgetful, and sometimes she just can’t remember what she did for the past several hours.
The time eludes her and she perceives events like it’s a video that is being skipped quite often. Like dreams, she often just finds herself during an ongoing event, right in the middle of it.
Her condition is also shown as glitches in reality, as the reel of her life keeps skipping forward on its own.
It has also been affecting her work, and once she missed a big appointment because she couldn’t keep track of the time or space she was in.
At first, she thought she had just dozed off or zoned out, so she didn’t think much of what eventually turned out to be a big problem. This is why she is late in visiting her doctor about it.
The diagnosis and challenges
She eventually does visit him and he diagnoses her with Cloud Cytoma, a very rare disease of which there are only a few cases worldwide.
The doctor also tells her that she’s the first Korean patient to have been diagnosed with the disease, which only confirms the rarity and gravity of the circumstances.
On top of all that, she learns that neither surgery nor medication can cure it. There is no cure for her disease and she
Her case is even more difficult as her brain tumor is of a different form. Instead of being a clear lump, the tumor cells are dispersed throughout her cranial nerves.
They’ve spread over a wide area, and a particularly high concentration of them near her temporal lobe is what, as the doctor hypothesizes, is the cause of her temporary memory loss.
Her disease has also worsened, which has led to Hong Hae-In suffering from hallucinations, and the doctor tells her that it can also lead to personality disorders.
Medication wouldn’t do much for her and the surgery would be too risky because the cells have dispersed so much.
All in all, she has only three months until her death. She offers the doctor monetary benefits for a possible treatment but he says it’s out of the picture.
A hope
Even so, rare medical diseases have been known to be cured by miracles, and that’s what her husband Hyun-Woo searches for on the internet.
Hong Hae-In also relies on it; that, and the fact that she has too much confidence and willpower. She simply thinks that she can survive it and make it out alive.
Meanwhile, her condition is only getting worse. During a family hunt, she starts hallucinating and gets nearly mauled by a wild boar before Hyun-Woo saves her.
While he has hoped to get away from her, he remains by her side and rooting for her in her journey to recovery.
Also Read: Yoon Eun-Sung: Queen of Tears character explained