My first encounter with a cancer patient.

The killer comes so quietly and unobtrusively that even as it strikes its last fatal blow we are not aware of it. Do you know what I am talking about?

This memory all began with a friend's visit in which he noticed a book on cancer on my table. He looked at me, probably wondering why I would need to read such a book. I told him I have been delving into the subject for more than a year now not because I am suffering from it but it is probably the only sickness that comes even when we are at our strongest and fittest. So I told him the true story of a lost friend, a death which happened more than twenty years ago.

I was about forty years of age then. Taman Intan where we lived was a residential area surrounded by lots of trees, rubber estates and secondary jungles that were beautiful sights to us. With my corner house at the far edge of the area, I awaken to lush greens and fresh air with no noise pollution as traffic hardly comes into my part of the residential area. Of course, my wife was a little weary of thieves as she correctly predicted that our house was a good place for such people to hit. (I have to tell you about that in a later posting.)

And the surrounding was just the paradise we discover for walks and runs. So, in the evenings we would take walks and runs before it got too dark and perhaps dangerous.

Back to this lost friend. His house was a little distance away in a housing estate adjoining mine. After we had met a few times in our runs into the rubber estate and the nearby villages as well as secondary jungles, we decided to team up for our evening jogs and runs. He would take a walk to my place and then together we ran and enjoyed the evening breeze and body sweat for approximately an hour.

Slightly younger than me, at the age of about thirty years, he proved to be a faster runner than I was. Imagine that! And I was one of six members of my school's cross-country team. And fifteen years earlier I had run from Alor Star to Kuala Kedah, a distance of approximately twelve kilometres in less than an hour. I never believed he could have beaten this guy each and every time but beat me he did.

It was good for me as i really had to put in every effort to pace him. Each outing left me really tired out and ready for a good night's sleep. It helped this guy to stay young and strong. My thanks to him for his help in this respect.

So, his stamina was great, his strength was fantastic and in terms of fitness, he was at his best.

Of course, I did notice that he sneezed and seem to have colds quite often. I did ask him about it and according to him he had seen a doctor who told him it could be allergy to pollen grains which could be in the air he breathed. I did not think more about it, accepting a doctor diagnosis of his problem. However, today, if I were to meet a guy with the same problem as my friend's with it constantly a problem I would advise him/her to go for second or even third opinions. You see, his doctor made a grave mistake, each time dismissing it as pollen allergy.

Yes, that was his doctor's negligence in not suspecting something worse even when he had been seeing the same doctor almost every week for the same problem for more than half a year.

One evening, I found him at my gate not dressed for a run. I told me he needed a phone badly. (In those days, we did not use hand-phones.) I told him if he needed it urgently, it was not a problem. He could have it. After all this guy was and is not so famous that he received so many calls a day. In those days, I hardly received any call. However, I was, as expected, curious about what had transpired. So, he told me that he had just returned from a medical examination in which the doctor in a private hospital had told him he could be having cancer. Cancer! It was a shock to me. Imagine this strong healthy young man with cancer. So, as news of his sickness spread he was expecting calls from relatives from the various states. And to worsen the problem of the day, his own house-phone must break down on that very same afternoon.

So, an operation was scheduled to take place in a week's time. That Friday saw his family and a few close friends at a hospital in Penang to give him moral support. The bad news received was that when they opened him up they found that it was so bad that the cancer cells have already spread to other parts of the body and it was useless to operate. They merely closed him up again.

Later. at home, he gradually suffered unbearable pain and had to be administered morphine to make him more comfortable. About half a year later, he died.

That was my first encounter with a victim of cancer. Knowing the victim well, I realise that cancer is one killer which can strike so quietly that we might not even know that it had already penetrated our body's defenses. Strength, excellent health and fitness are no deterrent to its attack. Today, I have met a few more cancer victims and so am determined to understand it well enough to be prepared to the highest possible extent for its invasion. Research is ongoing on this killer and I am positive it can be stopped as I talked to some of the survivors and learned whatever I can from their experiences.

Looks like good strength and health alone would not do. A strong immune system through right nutrition, raw food, manner of cooking, removal of toxic substances from our food and air as well as removal of excessive stress are factors we have to look into to prevent or to remove this killer from our midst.