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Leave me alone!
11 October 2007
A cancer patient’s right to privacy, as well as an indictment of sorts of busybodies.
By DR ALBERT LIM KOK HOOI
THE unmarried Malaysian Chinese woman in her late 20s gets a supposedly friendly jibe during the Chinese New Year festivities. “When will you be dishing out ang pows instead of receiving them?” (It is a Chinese custom that married women give out ang pows and unmarried ones receive them).
It gets more tiresome and strident every year as she continues to stay single through her thirties. To some women, this is light, friendly banter. To others, it is annoying and intrusive. Our love lives (and by extension our sexual orientation) should be a very private matter if we so wish it.
“How much do you earn?” is often asked thoughtlessly in conversation. In some quarters, it can be construed as the height of rudeness. On the other hand, there are those who freely tell you how much money they make.
This brings me to the third sanctuary in our lives where we have the right of being the ultimate gatekeeper. When we are unfortunate enough to suffer a major illness – heart attack, AIDS, stroke, Parkinson’s disease, insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, cancer – it is really up to us to talk about it or to keep it totally under wraps. We should tread carefully and respect the wishes of the patient if she does not want to share her misfortune. It does not matter what her reasons are.
An Englishman, resident in Malaysia for years, was diagnosed to have cancer of the tongue. He returned to England for treatment, which comprised surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
He e-mailed his friends and relatives in Malaysia often to keep them informed of the progress of his illness and the treatment he was undergoing. Pictures of his face, which was distorted as a result of treatment, were for all to view. Telling his friends about his illness was his choice and perhaps his way of coping.
Another equally acceptable way of coping with cancer is to keep the pain and suffering a private matter. Cancer can be disfiguring and humiliating. If a cancer patient does not want to tell you about her stomas (bags of urine and faeces that hang externally on her torso), so be it. Just put yourself in her place. I can think of many other reasons why a cancer patient may not want to breathe a word of her disease.
For further reading, kindly visit The Star Online
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