(This is a guest post written by anthraxxxx)
Cancer, a name that is synonymous to one of the most lethal diseases that is plaguing man kind. Before I was 21, I have heard much about cancer but I never gave much thought about it and often shrugged it off as one in million affair. One of my closest encounters with cancer is when I heard my friend’s younger brother was diagnosed with cancer. Coincidentally, he was also my brother’s classmate. His brother had a fight against the cancer cells that are invading his body. Unfortunately, he died when he was barely 15 years old.
Despite the news, I still had the ‘Tidak apa’ attitude in me because I was naively convinced that no one in my family would get this disease until my younger brother was diagnosed for having Osteosarcoma at the age of 16, a disease that claimed his classmate’s life earlier. Maybe it is because I was living in a sheltered life and I did not know the meaning of human sufferings. Nothing major had happened towards my family and honestly, it was my first experience dealing with this situation. It all began when he noticed there was a swelling on his right ankle.
He told me he got it from accidentally hitting his ankle against a metal pole in his school and thought it was no big deal since it is norm for him to get bruises and swellings because he was very active in sports. After 3 months of applying ointment on his ankle, the swelling does not seem to disappear. Instead of disappearing, the swelling grew bigger in size. My mother was worried and she sent my brother to a private hospital for a further checkup. The world came crumbling down for my brother when he was told he had a growth on his ankle.
To confirm the doctor’s suspicion, my brother was required to have a biopsy on the next day. The suspicion turned out to be true and it is confirmed that he had Osteosarcoma. The doctor recommended my brother’s entire ankle to be amputated but you know, it will be a blow towards a teenager if you tell him he’s going to lose part of his right leg. It prompted my parents to send my brother to UMMC for a second opinion. It turns out that the professor who treated my brother has a better alternative than amputating the entire ankle. The professor recommended that my brother should undergo a knee-ankle bone transplant.
The main point of the surgery is to replace the knee to ankle with a prosthetic bone while maintaining the structure of my brother’s right leg. My parents consented and undergo surgery 3 months later after his admission to the University Hospital. The surgery was pretty successful because it was first of its kind from the Public Hospital. It took my brother 6 months to recover and a year to fully able to walk again. Along the way, he had to endured 14 months of chemotherapy. Life was hell for him. Fortunately enough, it was faith that kept him going as he was very determined to recover.
After undergoing some grueling physiotherapy and monthly checkups, he was declared free from the cancer cells, as they could not detect anything in his body. He went on to live his life to the fullest for another 4 years until he suffered relapse this year. This time he had lung metastasis and battled against it for another 4 months. Unfortunately the treatment has taken its toll on him, as he no longer has the energy left to endure another round of chemotherapy. Seeing he cannot respond to the treatment anymore, he requested to be transferred back to Malacca to recuperate while he spent his final days in a local hospital. He passed away peacefully on 2nd of July 2007 and he was only 22 years old.
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