FEBRUARY 26 — I turned 47 last Saturday.
Instead of the sadness I was expecting, all I felt was a calm gratitude for making it another year.
For my birthday this time, all I wanted was a couple of days of respite away from the stray tom who had taken to screaming at my door when I tried to sleep.
I got a bargain staycation in the city and then proceeded to spend most of my time napping in-between popping out for a meal or two, to make up for the feline-induced sleep deprivation.
State of being
How are things going so far?
Due to my chemo dosage being upped, the side effects have lingered.
Everything has a metallic aftertaste and half the time I feel so nauseous I don’t want to eat, but I make myself eat anyway because my immune system needs all the help it can get.
I am still losing hair.
Who knew that the tiny little nubs left over from shaving would also fall out?
My eyelashes and eyebrows are also barely hanging on.
Yet after getting over the shock of what I see in the mirror I find I quite like being bald.
Showers and getting ready for the odd grocery run take so much less time now but my new hobby on my rare outings is staring very firmly back at people staring at me.
Malaysians really need to be less rude, honestly.
Physiotherapy is no longer giving me much relief so instead I’ve been doing restorative yoga while still making myself move as much as I can.
The treatments are taking a heavy toll on my body so I must keep it strong even if exercise is my least favourite thing in the world.
Despite everything I still feel very, very lucky.
I have enough to cover my upcoming four rounds of Perjeta immunotherapy thanks to the generosity of friends and strangers.
If not for that I would have had to look at taking on debt or asking around for part-time work despite my illness and most of my spare time being taken up by hospital appointments.
It’s also a blessing I can still work because many of the chronically ill cannot or struggle to juggle their work commitments alongside their treatments.
My cancer diagnosis has also healed familial rifts and I talk to my family more often now, even if we are separated by long distances.
I have heard from friends who I haven’t spoken to in ages and generally I have encountered more kindness and encouragement than I expected, even from people from whom I least expected it.
Yet my blessings have weight to them because I think about the ones who do not have it as easy.
The women who are still waiting for their aid approvals from zakat or elsewhere, the cancer patients at stage three and four, or the ones with rarer types of cancer that aren’t as researched as breast cancer.
I think about that woman who drove herself back from her first chemo treatment.
I think about the anguished woman who was told to come back tomorrow because the oncology daycare ward was full that day.
I think about the people who have to fight their insurers for coverage, who have to argue that generic medicines won’t do, who have to explain they still need their cancer medications covered for the next five to 10 years.
“There but for the grace of God go I”—I have never felt that more even after surviving a bus crash where a change of seat midway through the journey saved me from being skewered.
Every step of my cancer journey was preceded by so many other women whose experiences and struggles have made treatments more widely available and known.
Funnily enough last year before I got cancer I was wondering what else to do with my life as I’d felt a little directionless.
So silly me decided to do one of those “life calling” readings and it told me my calling would be in the “healing” space and I laughed so loudly.
“What nonsense. Healing? Wellness? Does this mean I have to start shilling supplements now?”
Sometimes, you find that life can be funny and the joke is on you.
I hope to keep advocating for healthcare in this country (I have a track record for that, mind you) and for healthcare workers and patients alike.
I hope my stories help people.
I hope you know, people who read my columns, that for years you have given me reason to write and now many of you have given me reason to live.
I also hope that you too understand that every second of life is a gift even when it doesn’t feel like it because we are never guaranteed even one more hour on this earth.
I also hope that the neighbour who very nearly ran me over on the curb outside my house has learned to drive better.
Feel free to buy me a coffee at my Ko-fi or otherwise spare me a thought or prayer as I have more than a year of treatments to look forward to before I can ring the cancer-free bell.
Thank you for reading, dear reader.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
