H O P E

You may have often heard and/or read that cancer or any other life threatening diseases, depending of their stages or stadiums can actually be cured. The modern technology and a handful proven traditional herbal medicines can provide the hopes for all the patients to get well and healthy again.

Do you have a family member or friends or maybe you yourself are having serious health problems? It’s understandable that the despairs and the feelings of helplessness will be dominating in mind when we are faced with such difficult situations.  The word cancer by itself can create  threatening worrisome minds as it has been said in many journal of medicines that those healthy cells in our bodies could actually turn into malignant cancerous cells even for people who look very healthy because they have good life-styles.  And just months ago you probably have also heard about the case of a young doctor in Singapore who maintained a healthy life style but then he died just within months after he was diagnosed having a lung cancer.

My wife is a cancer survivor and praise God the Almighty that year after year we have been given the opportunities to live through happily and it’s almost five years from the time she had to go through that distressing combination of chemo and radio therapies as well as other required treatments  after the removal of the cancerous lump from her body.

However, every time she told me about her scheduled visit to the hospital to have the required health examination as a cancer survivor, there was a feeling that uneasy to overcome inside my head and  the first word that always immediately follows in my mind is hope  as I do really hope that she will have the best health examination result.  

Hope or hoping for the best outcome shall probably be the first thinking flashes in the mind of any of us every time we are faced with any kind of threatening situation. Hope will stimulate our bodies to gain back the required control and minimum metabolism to happen and what most important from the effect of hope is the zest and spirit to continue with our lives.

When she was diagnosed having cancer, my wife lost almost 20 percent of her usual weight within just days. There were people, including some doctors we visited that have very minimum sympathy of the worries that we had at that time. One person that was introduced to us even said “people will die anyway so what to worry.”  Maybe that person was trying to tell us not to worry about what’s happening in his own way but he must try to understand that not everyone is a tough person who still can have positive expectations during difficult times. However, may God forgive that person for being so insensitive at that particular time.

Beside God’s will, in many healing cases, the attention and caring treatments given by family members, friends, and folks can increase hopes to be healed from dreadful diseases. The increased hopes can certainly help many patients with serious illness recovered through.

As I said earlier that I am still having a bit of nagging feelings every time I heard my wife told me about her scheduled health examination, and I think that I will always be like that, but the hope and prayer that immediately follows it that actually matter most. Having said that, folks and friends, high hopes, expecations and prayers should be accompanied with real efforts and don’t ever let them be substitutes.

My wife, me and our three children are among the lucky ones who have many good friends that supported with their prayers and visits that add hopes in our lives at that difficult time.  One friend since I was a teenager whose mom is also a cancer survivor even visited us with 3 priests with her, creating more hopes. The auntie of another friend from my teen age frequently called my wife although she lives in Australia just to share her surviving experience with cancer.So many others that I could not mention one by one, they were trying to really help and that made us feel better.

Last but surely not least, let me share with you that we also so blessed to have met two doctors that are really special doctors as they not only do provide their patients with good professional medical advises and thorough diligent services but also through their words and gestures they create, spread and increase hopes.  This open letter of thanks from us is actually so long overdue but from the bottom of our hearts we express our thanks to DR Yap Whang Hwee Yong and Dr Karen Yap.