Cancer Warriors

Recently, there was a programme on Channel News Asia (CNA) that talks about Cancer Warriors and more specifically, cancer survivors. I happened to catch the show and somehow I got turned off.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the programme although it is indirectly an advertisement promoting Parkway Cancer Centre. The resilient of the survivors are to be commented as the treatment process is not something to be taken lightly as I very well know. I also know of a couple of cancer survivors within my workplace and in church and there was a person whom I do not know who wrote to me and who is also a cancer survivor.

So why I am I so worked out about it?

The stories of the cancer survivors a.k.a. cancer warriors in this case are probably far more palatable and are also more viable commercially. Everyone wants to hear the good stuff, the positive angles; who wants to hear about failure, about death, about defeat and the odds against surviving cancer?

If CNA had entitled the programme something like “Cancer Survivor” perhaps it would have been more acceptable to me personally but for the programme to be entitled “Cancer Warrior” and the focus is on the 2 ladies that survived does a great disservice to those who had cancer but fought on just as hard as the survivors, endured the pain, endured the sadness the family faces as they see the “warrior’s” bodies wasting away from the cancer even as they valiantly battle the dreaded disease. You might say that it is my ego speaking and in my case yes I admit it because why is “my story” who is currently fighting the disease or the stories of other warriors who lost the battle not featured?

In every battle, there is always a story worth telling except perhaps for those that had given up and was defeated from the onset. When I was last warded in TTSH, there was an elderly gentleman who had been coughing for about 2 months and was in and out of the hospital several times but the doctors were not able to determined what was wrong until his latest admission where the tests found cancer in is chest. I had a chit chat with him to try and encourage him as he moves on towards chemotherapy and there was one thing that he said that touches me. He told me that there were once his grandchildren who were fairly young who went up to him and told him that he must get well and that they will wait for him to come home. At that point he cried and told me how can he not endure the condition that he has or endure the therapy that he will be going through. He has a story and for the sake of his grandchildren he will battle on and he is a cancer warrior.

For the survivors, kudos to you and your battles and I personally know some of you. I say kudos too to those who fought just as hard but had lost the battle and I know some of these people too. Their lost did not make them any lesser as warriors but their stories is every bit as poignant as the survivors.

In God We Trust and in Christ alone my hope is found.

Hebrews 11:1