Dec 16, 2009

Your money or your life



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Sometimes life can be very funny. It is just like magic: Now you see it, now you don’t. The untimely deaths of Yasmin Ahmad and Michael Jackosn are just two examples of how fragile life can be. Like sometimes, while browsing your morning paper, you would have come across an obituary of a friend whom you have just met a few days ago.

Our lives are not born-out to be perfect. As we grow up, there are a host of challenges and obstacles for us to clear before we can retire in peace: education, employment, children up-bringing and family. However, there are greater challenges that lie ahead: the social and health challenges.

The social challenge here refers to the social elements that can influence the behavior of our children. As parents, we are certainly very concern about how our children grow-up and to prevent them from mixing with the wrong kind of people and indulging in vices. Such a challenge is within our control. It is the health challenge we are facing that is scary.

Our lives are bombarded and ravaged with so many diseases that when we managed to overcome one, the next one awaits us. Just let me name some of these diseases so that you can realize why good health is so important: cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and a host of other major organ diseases.

Of all the diseases, cancer is the most fearful to the extent it simply spells death to the person it strikes. The treatment cost for cancer which can be in the region of a few hundreds to tens of thousands or more a month and which do not guarantee a cure, is simply way out of the reach of ordinary working people. And for those who might have some savings, it will be a predicament: to spend on treatment or to save for raining days.

I must emphasize that it is not only the cost of treatment in cancer that is expensive as there are many other diseases that are equally beyond the reach of many, like hypertension and diabetes whereby the treatment is for life. With each discovery of a new drug that has numerous claims of better efficacy and cure rate, the price marketed by the multinational drug company is simply way above the reach of many. As if the cost of medication is not enough to ‘kill’ you, then together with the cost of hospitalization and the doctor’s fees, your ‘death’ is guaranteed.

Now, while you are still able to, it is extremely important that you pay a lot of attention to your health and well-being. Let us not wait for disease to strike us and when it does, treatment will be too late.

If we are to talk about fairness, then death is the fairest of all. Regardless of who you are, from being a King to a beggar, both must die.

This article is in memory of my late brother James Liew, who was either too stubborn or just not able to look after himself.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Memory may sorrow you more.
Life is passing from else where as transition dwelling in a body. The body is designed to look after the life. Unfortunately, it possesses a lot of illness and bad bacterial which is left behind by its creator accidentally.
In fact, it is discouraged to talk about life.
As Confucian said that we did not understand what was life, why talked about the death and ghost.
I have got a converted Muslim Chinese friend was fond of talking about life in his whole life. Pursuing the unknown of life.
It was because he worked very hard day after day like many people did, but he could only earn a little bit of emolument no enough to keep his family.
Seeing other worked lazily but, getting rich faster than many people. He complained that God was unfairly treating him.
In order to find out why. Then he studied religion and accepted religious preaching.
Eventually, he was convinced to embrace Islam. But, unluckily, Islam could not help him emancipate from his self-made torture of life.
One day an Imman told him even a killer could be raised to heaven if he tended to change himself and being reinvented to transform himself as new man.
God would not hesitate to forgive him and give him bonus of pardon that allowed him to live in heaven as a happy man forever after life.
He said God was stupid and unfairly making decision without proper consideration.
So he went to Mecca in order to stay nearer to God as well as asking God how HE judged a person. Of course, God was living far away from people, he finally couldn't get the chance to talk to God.
One quiet day, he created a big commotion arguing with an great Imman in a mosque. He was running amok trying to kill the Imman by pushing him against the wall. Police came and took him to hospital.
He was diagnosed having psychological disorder and should be admitted to psychiatry ward for treatment.
Until today, no one of his friends has known where is his about.
This is his life. He confined himself in a pen of life.
At least, death to him is no a matter. It is nothing to him as though he has set himself free from there where his life came from.

cancan said...

engann, can we blame God of who and what we are? or the adage that God helps those who help themselves simply holds true to all humans, regardless of religion.