Only three years into their marriage, and at 31 years old, Cheng's husband was diagnosed with nasopharyngeal cancer. At the age of 40 he had a stroke which left him comatose. After he had been hospitalized for a year, the hospital asked the family to take him home to be cared for there. Thus began Cheng Su-huei's almost two-decade long experience as a caregiver.

"The night after I took him home, my husband fell out of bed," says Cheng. Luckily her neighbors were able to come and help, otherwise there'd have been no way her small frame could have budged his 80-plus-kilogram body.

"He's your husband, you take care of him." With these heartless words from her mother-in-law, Cheng gritted her teeth and took on the care of her husband single-handedly. Every two hours she gave him some water, and every four some milk through a feeding tube. Every day she had to burp, exercise, and wash him. And meanwhile, at the same time as she was taking care of her husband, Cheng also had to hold down a job as a seamstress, trying to earn enough to raise her son and daughter.

"Every day he lay there, his eyes wide open, but with no sign he could even see me," recalls Cheng. But even though it seemed like her husband was insensible, every day she would call his name, talk with him, and attend to his personal hygiene.

"Any time a professional caregiver came to our house, they said it really didn't feel like the home of a patient like that," says Cheng proudly. Despite the fact she felt hunched over and her body ached all over, she persevered with a smile, because "there's always hope."

In 1996 the Taiwan Association of Family Caregivers was established. Homecare nurses told Cheng that she could apply for a short-stay service, where a nurse could come in twice a week, two hours a visit, to give her a chance to get away for a while. But as good an idea as that sounded, to Cheng it seemed like a hassle; smiling, Cheng says that whenever she went out, she had no idea where to go or what to do, and she'd just end up wandering around the vegetable market, wanting to go home, but embarrassed to do so because the two hours still weren't up.

When her father died three years ago, Cheng had to head back to southern Taiwan to take care of the funeral arrangements, so she had no choice but to put her husband into temporary care for two weeks. When she returned home, she found that in the past two weeks her husband hadn't had his teeth brushed or been washed, which broke her heart. And on the trip home, she later found out, he hadn't got enough oxygen, or something else had gone wrong, and the day she got him home, her husband passed away.

"I can't believe he's really gone," says Cheng. "Even though he didn't respond, he was still good, a good listener. He was my strength...." After her husband died she felt her life had lost all meaning. "I would cry all day, my mind was totally blank, and life just felt empty."

Her husband's passing completely broke her heart, but she couldn't mourn for long, because she soon had to look after her father-in-law, who was bedridden after a fall.

Her husband was an only child, and so naturally with him gone the burden of caring for his father fell to his wife. Exhausted body and soul and faced with having to once again go through the caregiving experience, Cheng felt afraid. She discussed things with her mother-in-law, and arranged for her father-in-law to go into an old people's home.

When she was taking him from the hospital to the home, he burst into tears in the lift and asked, "A-huei, how can you be so cold-hearted and send me to a home?" At this her heart melted and she felt she had to take him back home and steel herself for the job of being a caregiver again.

She took care of her father-in-law, who also suffered diabetes and heart problems, for a year before he passed on. In a turn of events that seemed like fate was mocking her, Cheng then had to turn her attention to her mother-in-law, who began suffering increasingly severe Alzheimer's. Thankfully this time Cheng's neighbors were able to help her in caring for her mother-in-law, meaning that she wouldn't be trapped in the house and the old lady wouldn't go wandering off.

So that she wouldn't have time to let her mind start running away with her, Cheng started working with the Taiwan Association of Family Caregivers as a member of their "home service" team. In this role, between 7:30 a.m. and 3 p.m. Cheng visits three elderly people who are living alone, helps them wash, and chats with them. Although the monthly pay is only NT$15,000, to her it is less like work than a part of life.

Cheng still has some regrets about her time caring for her husband and his father. "I feel like I could have done more," she says. "When I got tired and annoyed I couldn't help but complain, lose my temper, stop smiling, and start feeling unwilling to carry on. Now that they're gone, I don't have the chance to make that up to them."

Having dedicated herself heart and soul to caring for others for so much of her life, she's never really had her own life.

"I've had an ill-fated life," sobs Cheng of the difficulties that seem to have plagued her and given her an pessimistic attitude toward her own life. She doesn't dare think about the future; she says that over those years she was looking after her husband, she ended up neglecting her children somewhat, and it's only by sheer luck they didn't end up going off the rails. She doesn't dare expect that they'll take care of her in her twilight years. "I've even bought my own gravesite."

Half laughing, half crying, Cheng says that she was "very unwilling" to spend so much of her life taking care of people, but she didn't dare voice such unfilial, irresponsible thoughts. Instead she would just swallow the bile and face the world with a smile.

If husband and wives, and children and parents are indebted to one another, then Cheng Su-huei's debt has most certainly been paid. But who will repay her for the 20 lost years of her own life?

The focus of Cheng Su-huei's life now consists in bathing and doing everything for elderly living alone in her job as a "family services officer."