Cancer Awareness Forum

Date: 20th October 2012
Time: 9am - 12pm
Venue: SJKC Desa Jaya, Kepong
 

This is our very first forum that targets the teachers; we hope that teachers may share some of this information with young learners and the parents, and we would able to get bigger crowd for our future forums.
 

On October 20th, we invited Oncologist Dr Ho Gwo Fuang to share with us what is cancer? He also touched on causes of cancers, diagnosis and treatment of cancer, some statistics on cancer, some myths and facts about cancer.
 

Dr Ho advised us to lead a healthy lifestyle, proper working-resting-eating-exercising schedule. He stressed that the quality of life of a cancer patient is of utmost important. Give the patient the respect he/she deserved. He cited an example that family members of a cancer patient restricted all the favourite food of the patient; he felt that the patient could have been happier if his feeling be shared and made known to all family members, and his favourite food be allowed in moderation. So we should let the cancer patients lead a happy lives, the state of their mind could be helpful to them in fighting the illness.
 

When a patient is terminally ill, both the patient and all the other care-providers, normally the family members are equally suffered. Hospice is an organisation that covers this aspect with no cost. Hospice provides palliative care, loaning required equipment like wheelchairs, ripple mattress, oxygen concentrators and so on. And most importantly educate patients and their care providers on basic nursing skills.
 

Mr Wong Koei Onn, the Director of Kasih Foundation was shared on his journey with Kasih Hospice. How he managed to cheer some patients. How did Hospice help to ease the care-providers of patients?
 

We have put so much emphasis in welcoming a new life; don’t we hilarious in welcoming a new-born baby? Could we put the equal effort if not more in taking care of someone who is in the final journey of his/her life?
 

Of course it is never easy to take care of the terminally ill patient; hence the awareness of Hospice service is of paramount important, and please bear in mind, the service is totally Free Of Charge!
As a retired accountant who worked in English speaking environment for years, Mr Wong did his sharing in fluent and beautiful Mandarin.
 

The last speaker was Mdm Connie Wong, 46, a fourth year stage four lung cancer patient, a single mother with two young children of seven and four. I always get her on stage to share on her journey. She had gone thru four chemotherapies. I told her that her sharing would cheer up many others, and she was in fact helping others. I told her mother and two young kids to be proud of Connie. 

Connie Wong practises qi-gong, as a Buddhist she prays, as a mother of two, she is just like others, sending her kids to and fro schools. Of course, she has got strong support from family members. She was grateful to have few charitable people to donate some money for her last chemotherapy. She was also grateful to have CNI Foundation to support her with few months’ food supplements. She is willing to go on the stage so long as her health allows.

Even though the crowd was not big enough, we were still happy as the teachers were active in the Q&A session. We would continue to hold forum of this kind so long there are listeners.