COMMENT Cancer is a life-changing event; not just a medical condition. It changes your priorities, causing you to make different life choices.

People facing cancer sometimes choose to delay their treatment in order to send their children to school.

Dr Ong Tee Chuan from the Haematology Department of Hospital Ampang, one of the important people behind the inception of The Max Schooling Project (or Sambung Sekolah in Bahasa Malaysia) in 2014 has seen this often.

Other times, children drop out of school. This is the why Max Foundation, a global NGO assisting families living with cancer, started The Max Schooling Project.

“This project is to make the children feel they are not different from their friends. For example, they could also go on a school trip. They deserve to enjoy the same school experience.”

“We’re also giving a chance to the community to help these children who are normally unnoticed,” Ong added.

Through the Max Schooling Project, hospital physicians refer children to The Max Foundation’s Malaysia team.

The Max Foundation matches children with an “adopter” who coordinates financial assistance on a monthly basis for the child. The Max Foundation carries out regular follow-up contact with the enrolled child and their family to provide financial and emotional support.

More than two dozen children have been beneficiaries of the programme.

Kak Ida and Ahmad

In my job, I have the opportunity to call all the families we work with, on the monthly basis. One of the families is Kak Ida’s.

We have talked on the phone for nine months now. Every month, I will chit-chat with Kak Ida. Her only child is one of the seven children who are the early beneficiaries of the project.

If I am lucky, I manage to talk briefly with her shy son, Ahmad.

The pain from her chemotherapy treatment cost her sleepless nights. She vomited blood and dealt with severe chest pains, she told me through our monthly phone calls. She is open about her ordeal.

It was a quiet Wednesday morning in August when we finally met for the first time. Amid nervousness, I greeted her and quietly standing behind her was Ahmad.

She smiled a charming smile, and in the next hour, she shared her journey - how it started and how far she has come.

Having been diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma (a type of blood cancer) in 2012, she is not only a cancer survivor but a single mother to her teen son.

He was only 12 years old when she was diagnosed, and cancer was an alien concept. He was only aware that his mother was sick and dressed in a hospital gown for six months. He was taken care of by his grandmother during the difficult time.