The message is simple,
it's early detection saves lives, saves breast. We have a
Chinese support group, Malay support group,
Expats support group.
One of the strong messages we want to pass is
don't waste on your ?.
Let the first screening be the
door opener
to your life and you know, go for subsequent, regular screenings.
The thing about breast cancer is the later it's discovered, the
lesser the treatment options and more expensive,
and above everything else, life expectancy
is
substantially reduced
whereas if you
detect it early,
you have a lot of treatment options
and life goes on.
I was in my early 30s
so it was by a coincedence where I went to a GP (General Practitioner) and he
diagnose that there is a lump.
So then I was..
complete my surgery.
I went for a,
I need to go for a chemo,
six cycles that was about six months.
So that's the time that I'm very worried of my job,
my families
and also my life or my future, how will it be.
So when I was about to be discharged from the hospital, there was a lady who came
to my ward,
she visited and I didn't know who is she.
So she said that she was from the Breast Cancer Foundation, she is a volunteer and also a patient
that went through what I'm going through. So I feel glad to meet her and she
told me that if I face anything that I need to know, I can call to
any of them
to get a, to share what I feel.
There are English and Malay support groups.
So I met some of the Malay survivors also.
When I first step into, listen to their
stories, I was very shocked that I'm not alone.
That was when I heard their stories and they had been survivors for so many years,
more than ten years, so I told myself, if they can survive, why I can't. So that
gave me the motivation.
The survivors are really a mentor to me. They have this,
yoga therapy
and they have this arts activities,
and have the line dance
and have karoake and all this things. So it's up to you, which one do you want.
It's
something new that I have never tried before because I
was quite afraid that after the surgery
whether it would injured my body.
But when my friends told me to join them,
and they told me that it will not hurt me so I find that, okay, fine. Then, I just go
one day to Kallang
and watch them how they
do dragon boating.
Life is great!
And I enjoy,
before then, I was not the type where I would be easily spoken. I will not
like to join in with a lot of activities.
But now I find that I have more friends
and I see that life is not the end if you have cancer. With cancer,
it doesn't mean you're going to die. Life still needs to go on, you see. There are still a
lot of things that you can do
and you can help the community.
There was a dragon boat.
I think there was a World
Dragon Boat in Singapore, it was in 2006.
That was when I read about the dragon boat and
it was good for us because we have our lymph nodes removed
because of the lymphedema and all so I thought that, 'Oh yes, I should call
Breast Cancer Foundation'. And at 2007, I joined the dragon boat team.
It's just a great team to be with.
At the time actually, I wasn't in contact with anybody actually, especially with the
survivors. I think it's really great that's why I found that Breast
Cancer Foundation is actually a place that we all belong. And the experiences and
especially we're all in the same boat,
we can speak on the same level.
I honestly had wished that I went there earlier than that.
At least I have comfort and ?
We have all the survivors, all together,
you know, the bonding is always there
and actually,
Breast Cancer Foundation actually,
give us so much,
it's like our second home,
with all the activities and
most of us are just survivors and we can talk about anything and just
actually do everything together.