ChanKelwin.com

(This is a guest post written by Simon)

To most people, MAKNA does not mean much, except for some who have seen their volunteers selling bookmarks or other knick-knacks as part of their fundraising. MAKNA is the Malaysian National Cancer Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to fight cancer and help the people suffering from one of the most devastating and debilitating diseases known to us.

Cancer has always been a distant concept for me as a person, always hearing, ‘oh, so-and-so has lung cancer, he’s been smoking for 10 years’, or ‘remember that lady, she passed away last year of cervical cancer’. Probably all that changed when 2 years ago when my own brother was diagnosed for nose cancer. He was 38 then, never smoked a single fag, or drank any alcohol at all. He had only been married for 2 years at that time, but without children.

And so he endured a year of radio therapy, which thankfully was successful. But as a result of the treatment, he was always sick, and suffered continuously from sore throat and coughs. People always say that radio therapy is ‘not as worse’ as chemotherapy, but if you have a personal involvement then you will probably see it differently other than as a disconnected observer.

Late last May, my brother was diagnosed with leukemia, or cancer of the blood, as a result of the radiotherapy carried out for his blood cancer. In a short two weeks, he passed away after a difficult yet futile battle that robbed him of his dignity.

Support MAKNA. I do, because it can make a difference to those still with us.

Related posts:

1. 35 Battle Cancer At The Age Of 16
2. 19 Lives Cut Short By Cancer
3. Blood Donation Checklist
4. Life Is Short. How Are You Living It?
5. 02 Why Did I Choose MAKNA?

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Blogathon 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.