My Mom, My Heroine
By Keh Chooi Yiang (19 Mar 2006)

The toughest time in the life of a woman as a homemaker must surely be at mid-life. That’s the time that children are in the rebellious teens and face pressures in their academic achievements while the husband is busy consolidating his career path. It is just so unfair a time to learn that you have Stage Two breast cancer and must have a mastectomy! That happened to my Mom 16 years ago. Her first reaction on hearing the news was that we, her children, might have a stepmother, an experience she herself went through while in her teens. She clung on, through hopeful remission for 10 years and then through dreadful recurrence over the past five and a half years. Three days after Dad’s birthday in September, she finally told us that she was weary of fighting and was letting go. We, as the children, were working in good positions. She was happy for that. She asked that we look after Dad and three weeks later, she slipped away.

The short account above doesn’t tell about the countless number of times Mom lost her hair and how she would disguise that with a scarf and sunglasses to make her look as cool and graceful as a Hollywood actress! It doesn’t describe the anguish upon hearing that the dreaded disease had returned in the more malignant and hopeless Stage Four form, for which the five year survival rate barely reaches five per cent!

It doesn’t tell of the dignity with which she faced her fate and her pride in not wanting to be an object of pity to friends and having to explain the course of her disease and the inevitable end. We were not allowed either to feel sorry for her or do things differently. She continued to be the chief executive officer and managing director of our home!

Fortunately, Mom was assigned an oncologist who joined her in her battle against the cancer. She was his star patient, so he claimed once to a seminar, compliant and trusting while he was her ideal caregiver, understanding and compassionate. She was often called upon to provide counselling to his other patients who were depressed and felt defeat. Knowing the huge expense of fighting such an illness, he would often waive his fees and enroll her into drug trials that offered free treatment.

Her final two years of chemotherapy was particularly rough. Her hair disappeared for the umpteenth time. She became very tired. Her last eight days with us was spent in hospital with an infection for which she was given continuous antibiotics. In the end, the cancer that had slipped past the last drug treatment lodged in her lymph nodes and in her lungs. A new drug was to be tried to reverse the trend but she was already having difficulty breathing and her blood count was very, very low.

I think we were far more distressed than she was! She was comforting us more than we were her, even telling my brother that she would survive because she needed to nag and prod him to do things! She was placed on morphine to ease the pain and as she drifted in and out of consciousness, she could still respond with nods and a press of the hand when we talked to her.

She drew her last breath before me and my brother on 15 October 2005.

I think part of the reason she put up a spirited fight against the disease laid in the trust she placed on her oncologist. She kept faithfully to his advice and recommendations, trusting in his knowledge and in his ability to seek out new knowledge to help her. She was diligent in following his treatment and procedure. Once, a drug began to fail as her CEA shot up 300% in 3 months. She didn’t lose her trust in him. Other times, drugs only worked after several anxious months or the beneficial effects only lasted for a short time. She also survived for 16 years without following any fanciful diet or fads. She was happy with a normal but balanced diet.

Mom was a great cook and the queen of our family kitchen. However, caught up in our own lives then, we have now lost many of Mom’s delicious personal recipes such as Siamese laksa and the special peanut sauce for steamboat. If she can hear me now, I want to tell her that the Prime Minister’s wife herself passed away five days after her. I would like to tell her too that the Government will be doing more to reduce the costs of cancer treatment. I want her also to know that Dad’s fine and that my sister’s two toddlers, sleeps over with him on weekends.

I wish that the condition of Mom’s disease: that there is no cure yet, only remission and control, and that mastectomy by itself does not mean breast cancer has been kept at bay - could be better known so that all families affected can stay strong and united to sustain and support the quality of life of the victim. Pooling our resources together and in fact, being a united and caring family before Mom went a long way to easing her pains and anxieties and, I like to feel, allowed her peacefully to leave us. In turn, we have been able to accept her absence with grief and sadness but not guilt. Thanks for the care and memory, Mom!
 

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