Hong Hae-In has a brain tumor that’s both aggressive and very rare. With her expected date of death almost past her, she receives a glimmer of hope that entails a certain darkness of quite a dilemma.
Cloud Cytoma afflicts the queen of the Queens Group, Hong Hae-In, at the peak of her professional game but during a personal slump that she has been in for years now.
The doctor says she has a couple of months before she passes away, with no cure in sight because of a certain quirk of her brain tumor, which has made it spread across her brain like a cloud.
Treatments are little to none and one that there is, requires her white blood cell count to cross a threshold.
She is way below that threshold and despite an increase in WBCs, she’s nowhere near the threshold, with her days only becoming more and more limited.
The glimmer of hope
As she begins to prepare for her passing, a glimmer of hope appears when her husband Baek Hyun-Woo receives a call from Germany. A new treatment makes it possible for her to survive.
A full recovery is not guaranteed but it can save her life. Hyun-Woo is delighted and beyond relieved to hear that, as is his father-in-law, for now, his daughter has a very real chance at life.
However, this new treatment comes with a grim caveat. The ultrasound used in this surgery will destroy her tumor cells but also, in the process, destroy a part of her hippocampus.
Consequently, she will lose her long-term memory. It is highly likely that she forgets everyone and everything in her life so far. A new, blank mental slate is the cost of her survival.
Hong Hae-In learns of the caveat
Knowing that she would obviously refuse to have surgery because of that, Hyun-Woo keeps this caveat from her and urges others in her family to do the same.
When he finally arrives at the German hospital with her, he comes clean to her. Hae-In is shattered and immediately withdraws her decision to undergo the surgery.
The cost is paramount and it means she forgets everything and everyone, including the love of her life who has reunited with her again, after suffering and overcoming a divorce together.
Hyun-Woo, on the other hand, can’t allow her to refuse the surgery. He desperately wants her to live, even if it means she would most likely forget him afterward.
Right now, Hyun-Woo’s efforts all amount to persuading Hong Hae-In to go through the surgery.
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