The Real Unsung Heroes

When I googled my name yesterday, I found out that I was one of the unsung heroes because I survived cancer. This has been bothering me since after I completed treatment actually, you know, the way I was called a hero just because I withstood six cycles of chemo and numerous Neupogen shots and 15 rounds of radiotheraphy, and a mastectomy and a 12-hour reconstructive surgery. Arghh...not to forget, the 9 months of being completely hairless...well, almost.

The real unsung heroes are the people who stood beside me regardless of stuff I had to go through, like the pretending they didn't smell the puke in my hair (1st chemo, when I still had hair), being OK walking around with a pale, sickly lady...always ready to catch in case I fell down, buying tons of stuffs they read somewhere would help me bear the pain and depression.

The REAL UNSUNG HERO NO 1 would have to be my husband, who was then merely a fiance who had miles to run if my condition so detested him. Instead, he held the plastic bag out when I vomitted my guts out. He even married me when I only had 1cm-hair on my head and one breast, and the prospect of never being able to have children!! How's that for a hero!!! Not to mention the countless hospital trips he had to make, spending the nights on the hard hospital chairs, placed facing each other so he could stretch his legs, day after day. Any other man would have ran off. And any other future-mother-in-law would have encouraged the son to flee the earth...but not his mom.

Tthe next HEROES would have to be 2 of my collegues, Norazila and Noralida. They visited often, and they brought stuffs...and in return, they got nothing!! In fact, I even offended Norazila once, refusing her visit by making some stupid excuse about visiting relatives when in fact I was having a rest at home, and she found out about this. It's kind of difficult to explain that sometimes I just didn't want to see anybody but at other times, I craved company. I was a wreck then, not knowing how to feel, how I should feel, about everything. And Norazila got the bad end of it...just one time thank god. Noralida was a good support with her visits and countless phone calls, asking how I was, asking the details of my treatment like she was really interested.

Another HERO is my father, whom despite his own high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, visited me at the hospital everyday. I had to lie to him about going for CAT scans or MRIs during visiting hours so he couldn't come.

So you see, these are the unsung heroes. Nobody really cared how much they had done, nobody had ever wanted to know. Most just took it that they did what they did because it was their resposibilities as fiance, friends and father. But that is NOT TRUE. They did what they did because that's who they are: people who care about people, people with honest, sincere hearts, people who are, in every sense of the word, HEROES.