1 October 2009

I have been thinking for a while about either taking a month or two from medical leave or resigning from work. My job is full of stress and the projects are all very short. Taking medical leave would not be fair to my boss as he requires staff to make sure the project runs as scheduled.

So in the afternoon after lunch, I took the opportunity to go over and meet my CTO and explained to him my health situation. He was not only sympathetic toward my medical condition but offered encouragement be explaining some of his personal experiences as he was also in similar situation when his wife was diagnosed as terminally ill. I then told him of my wish to resign and he agreed that currently somethings are more important than work.

I was also grateful to some peers who was willing to share the DVD "Healing Cancer From The Inside Out". I watched the show and now understand better how doctors and the cancer industry players work together to treat the patients. More importantly I now understand that when you have cancer, the doctor will only have three options to choose; a) surgery; b) chemotherapy/Radiotherapy and c) experimental drugs. Despite the success rate of chemotherapy to be between 2%-3% based on a 20 year study of cancer patients, the doctors still recommend patients to take chemo. Most frightening was that more patients died of chemotherapy that from the cancer itself. My friend Chin related his mother's case to me. About 10 years ago, at 70, his mother was diagnosed as having cancer and the doctor who was the president of the Oncologist Association of Malaysia said that his mother was a very good case to receive chemotherapy. Hearing the positive news, my friend arranged for his mother to receive her first dose. What a dose it was. She had the dose in the morning and by the afternoon she passed away. Although I understand under the standard checklist for patients before applying chemotherapy, patients must not exhibit any symptoms of flu, fever or cough and not feeling well, obviously this standard checklist is not good enough. Doctors are not trained about nutrition and getting the body in shape to take damaging treatment such as chemo. Everybody know before taking a long journey, they will ensure the car is in tip top shape (not just servicing but preventive maintenance) before embarking the journey. But no, most doctors don't do that.