By Choo Mei Sze,
The word cancer is an important one for me because it has taken up most of my young adulthood. I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 27, while I was at the high of my career as a host/emcee, doing research, and almost completing my PhD in developmental psychology. Firstly, it came as a huge shock to me, my family and friends because no one around me, or in my family had cancer. Secondly, we had to deal with the huge blow of having cancer emotionally, physically, mentally and financially at that age. If you ask me, I was definitely thrown off guard in life.
For 2 years, I spent it healing, accepting what I had and dealing with the side effects of a colectomy(I wore a colostomy bad for 2 months). My life was also put on hold, and I had to re-train my bowel system all over again. It was also during this time that I found the cancer journey a lonely one because it was difficult to find someone my age I could speak to in Malaysia, or even Asia about how to deal with a colostomy bag, or even retraining my bowels. I had so many questions, such as what do I wear to hide this bag, or after my rejoining, when will this end? In the end, I found solace from social media accounts from the US that was meant for colorectal cancer patients.
After I got better, I was encouraged by friends, and family to share my story(mostly friends), because they said people should know about it, and it’s a story that people would want to hear about. I did not believe them, but decided to write an article in my blog. What I did not expect was how viral it went, all the way to different parts of Asia, and even the United States. My website crashed because of the viewership, and my Facebook page following grew tremendously overnight. That was when I realized the need for this type of medical information and sharing because no one talks about it.
When I started going back to hosting, it also then that the Deputy Vice President of the National Cancer Society of Malaysia approached me, and she said she wanted someone to spearhead the forming of a young cancer survivors group. I knew instantly that this was my calling, to never allow other young cancer survivors to feel alone again. I was appointed the youth ambassador of the NCSM, and started the group. At first when it started, it was difficult to get the members to join in the activities because their family members did not allow them to join the support group citing that partaking in any activity related to cancer will bring the cancer back. It was definitely an uphill task for me.
I started sharing more about the group on my social media, and actively organize activities such as cooking classes, flower arrangement workshops, soap-making workshops, etc for the survivors to gather, and take their mind off cancer. I even invited parents of these survivors to joing, and it was then that they realized we do not talk about cancer. The participation increased, and now, we have hundreds of members, and I still organize activities. Many of the survivors in our group are very strong, because it isn’t easy getting cancer at the cusp of being an adult, but we all bond through that as well. Now, I also speak at both corporate and public events to get people know about what cancer is, and how it affects lives.
In short, that is WHY cancer matters to me, and I hope that no cancer patient has to go through the journey alone.
