A tribute to a friend who lost her battle against cancer

A few months ago, I wrote a post about 2 friends who were battling cancer.

One friend died a few weeks ago. And I didn’t even know about it until this weekend. She lost her battle to cancer. She was diagnosed with stage 3 non-small cell lung cancer last year in December and was given 6 months to live. She lived for 10 months. Hers is a very sad case because she never smoked, she lived a healthy lifestyle, and she wasn’t even overweight. She is the cancer patient with the right to ask: why me?

Unfortunately for my friend, she exhibited severe allergic reaction to chemotherapy and many anti-cancer drugs that they had to be stopped. She used alternative medicine instead.

When I receive sad news like this, 2 things come to mind:

My lack of effort in cheering her up during the last few months. I only visited her a couple of times, as I always came up with the excuse of distance and time constraints.

Compared to what another friend has done for her, my efforts were laughably little. The said lady has a 4-month old baby whom she regularly had to take with her on her regular visits to the cancer patient’s home and the clinic.

My own mortality. My friend was in her 40s and left behind a husband and a 13-year old son. Her death reminds me of my own mortality and what the fate of my children would be in the event of my death.

Years ago, news of death only concerned the peers of my parents: Nowadays, it is people of my own age, of my generation who are getting sick and dying.

As I wrote in a previous post:

We seldom appreciate how important our mom, our dad, our wife, our husband, our partner, our child, our sister, our brother, our friend to us until he or she is not around, whether temporarily or permanently.

Sad that I didn’t pay attention to what I wrote then.

I am glad to say that my other friend is responding quite well to chemotherapy and this is really good news because this is her second fight with brain cancer. Her tumor recurred last year. But this doesn’t mean to say I should take her for granted. She is just a phone call away…So here I go…