I am going to start with breast cancers.

In the last 5 years of my private practice, many women came to me to seek treatment for their disease (breast cancers). Unfortunately many of them came with advanced diseases. They were not old ‘makcik’ from far-away ‘kampongs’, but they were women with good education, wealthy background or wives of ‘somebody’. The usual story is that they were diagnosed to have breast cancers one or two years’ earlier, advised treatment but defaulted. They then seek ‘treatment’ from bomoh or singseh, spend thousands of ringgits, went overseas as far as Turkey or Egypt, not to see surgeons or oncologists, but the bomoh-equivalents of course. When the cancers ulcerated, infested with maggots and they themselves couldn’t bear the smell, they came to me; ‘Doktor, tolonglah, buatlah apa saja, saya terimalah !’ At that stage, the most I could offer is palliative treatments. In two circumstances, the only thing I did was to chase-away the maggots with turpentine, before they succumbed to their disease; ‘peacefully’- maggot-free !

This was one of the cases.
When I was working in the university, after seeing many of these ladies dying in this miserable way, I hope not to see this again. Now, after so much publicity on the cancer and the government efforts in preventing advanced diseases, campaign on free mammogram; things are not changing. What has happened to Malaysian women?
Is this is part of the famous ‘tunggu saat-saat akhir’ attitude of Malaysians? Wait till the last minute to renew your licence – fair, but this cancer, you lost your life.

I will try to discuss the causes of this in my next posting. Before I stop, see this….
This is mat saleh,….. minah saleh to be exact, from a textbook.
Bukan Pak Pandir sorang yang mati anak !