By Neo Xiaobin
Photojournalist
xiaobinn@sph.com.sg

 

I never met my paternal grandmother.

She was 50 when she passed away in 1979 due to advanced breast cancer. She was uneducated and the family struggled with finances.

So, she quietly did what she thought best.

She went with her neighbours to pray, turned to traditional Chinese medicine and applied herbs on herself.

By the time she sought professional help and surgery to remove her breasts, it was too late.

She died within three months of chemotherapy.

My father recalls her pain and suffering during her last days. He regrets finding out about her condition so late which delayed her treatment.

That was 31 years ago.

Today, advancement in medicine has yielded more ways to fight cancer.

"Even at a later stage, cancer can be controlled for years with the right drugs," says oncologist Tan Sing Huang, a consultant in National University Cancer Institute, Singapore's (NCIS) Department of Haematology-Oncology.

If detected early, lives can be saved.

I know I'm not alone when I say I take my health for granted.

For the past two months, I've been photographing Jenny Sito, 55, a breast cancer patient.

I think I'm like Jenny. She used to regard herself as invincible until she was diagnosed with stage 2, triple negative, breast cancer in February.

I skip meals, stay up late, drink too little water for my own good and think that Panadol is the solution to all my illnesses.

But no one is invincible.

Ms Sito is currently undergoing chemotherapy and will be having radiotherapy in November. Her treatment ends in January with a possibility of a 30 per cent relapse within 10 years based on her age and tumour characteristics.

Her live-in boyfriend of 15 years left her after he found out about her diagnosis. Estranged from her family and with no close friends in Singapore, she struggles with her treatment and side-effects while juggling her travel agency business all by herself.

Ms Sito appears energetic and jovial with people, and tries to busy herself with work and activities. But she reveals that the hardest moments are when she is back in her apartment alone. There, she often imagines the worst.

It is impossible to understand the battle that cancer patients have go through unless you have gone through the same fight. It's even worse if you have to front it alone.

You cannot imagine the pain of having needles being stuck into you because of chemotherapy, the nasty metallic taste in your mouth or the horror of seeing your hair falling out in chunks.

The advice from Ms Sito - go for regular health screenings, mammograms and take care of your health.

"The effects are not worth the excuses," she says.

I'll be going for my first health screening in almost three years since I started working.

Don't be like me.

To watch Neo Xiaobin's multimedia story on Jenny Sito, click here.