HEARING THOSE DREADED WORDS "YOU HAVE CANCER!"

Tan Sri Ani Arope

(This article is re-posted here with the writer's kind permission. It is a very personal account of his on-going battle with cancer. At our age, we know of loved ones and friends who have been through a similar experience. Some of us may even be facing this health challenge ourselves. It can be a lonely journey. We need the love and moral support of our family and close friends to see us through. If the article resonates with you, do drop the writer a line. He would be happy to hear from you. You can email him at aniarope75@gmail.com 

I usually do my blood test every six months to check on my cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Most of the other parameters seemed to be under control and within limits. Then one day, the Pathologist from the Testing Laboratory rang up to enquire whether there had been some changes in my sleep and health patterns. I casually mentioned that of late I had been experiencing interrupted sleep due to frequent urination. Then he told me that my PSA had elevated to an extremely high level of 947 where the normal range was between 2.7-4.7. He advised me to go for a thorough check up by an urologist.

I got myself admitted to the University Science Malaysia Medical Center for the thorough check-up. After the initial undignified prostrate examination, they put me through a battery of tests, starting with an Ultra Sound examination, a whole body bone scan, a CT scan and scans of my skull and pelvic region and finally injecting me with a radioactive material to scan the other vital organs. At the end of the two day tests, I will never forget hearing the words, ‘You have cancer’. They are the three chilling words one can ever hear, stopping one of control over ones’ life, not to mention any confidence that life will even continue.

My vital organs and lymph nodes were free from cancer except for some areas of my skeletal system--- some ribs and the pelvis. There was no point in doing a surgery on the prostate gland as the cancer cells had broken loose and attacked other parts of the body. I was prescribed some anti-androgen pills and a monthly hormonal injection. Apparently this brought down the PSA readings to below 150, but still it was a long way to go to get back to the normal readings.

Telling my wife and children was the first difficult step. But it had to be done. I tried to carry on as normal except for the frequent visits for my medical check-ups. Another difficult decision was whether or not to share this with others. I am not used to writing publicly about something so intensely personal. But as I see it, it seemed the best way to deal with it. Whilst I see it as a coping mechanism to help me meet the challenges, it is also a way of keeping family and friends up to date. I also hope that it may help others in a similar position.

The reaction was as expected. Everybody took it rather badly. It was like telling them that I had just received a verdict of the death sentence. I made my own preparations-- telling my former secretary Rahimah, who had been with me since the Rubber Research Institute days, that if the inevitable happened, she and her husband, Noordin were to take charge of my funeral rites.

My wife is partially paralyzed due to a stroke and two of my daughters were residing outside Malaysia and my son, due to his nature of work was often outside the country. They would not be in a position to help. Rahimah and her husband Noordin, would make arrangements with the nearby mosque to have my body prepared for burial. I contacted the secretary and committee of the mosque and got their consent that non-Muslim friends of mine wanting to pay their respects could do so at the Mosque.

After this initial shock had subsided, my daughter Salina who resides in Switzerland asked me to join her and spend some quality time with her holidaying in Austria and then undergo some alternative therapy in Switzerland. As I was in no immediate danger, I consented to take the long journey. We had a good time hiking and bicycling in the hills of Austria. On our return to Lausanne, Switzerland, Salina took me to see some therapists. One therapist gave me a body massage and said something to Salina. That made her break into tears and she left the room in haste. I asked the therapist what made her cry. Reluctantly he told me that he had said that I had wanted to go, ‘Il veut partir’. He made me promise to tell Salina that I wanted to live and I would live, ‘Je veut vivre et je vais vivre’. Then he called her in and I had to repeat the affirmation with conviction to her.

I had an open discussion with my wife. She wanted to know where I would like to be buried, -- near my mothers’ grave or elsewhere. To me it did not matter where. I wanted something simple and convenient for the living that has to attend to me. We talked about coming back to an empty house might be one of the greatest challenges in spite of the occasional blips in our daily lives. I guess she would miss those blips. There would be no one to bounce back some ideas or to argue with. We have relied on one another, have been intimate with each other, befriended and ‘defriended’ each other. Now when she needed me the most, she would be alone.

Ismail took it silently. He suddenly became more spiritual and suggested that we went to Makah. I accepted his invitation. Our ten day stay there was a spiritual bonding between father and son. He led in the rituals and saw to it that I was comfortable at all times. Makah is something special to the Muslims. One needs to be there physically to experience the spiritual vibes. One may be among millions, but one feels alone with the Creator. It is hard to describe. One has to be there to experience it.

On my return I felt spiritually rejuvenated and ready to meet whatever challenges that may come my way. We have no control over the challenges that come our way. But our reaction to the challenges is certainly within our control. We could be ‘bitter or better’, allow the challenges to ‘make or break’ us and emerge as ‘victims or victors’ of the challenge. With His Grace and the support of family and friends I will meet the challenges as they come.

When we got back to Malaysia, Sakinah our eldest daughter who had been in the US for fifteen years met us at the KLIA lounge. She had arrived earlier that morning via Moscow and Singapore. It was a pleasant surprise and brought back the family together again. The Almighty works in strange ways.

Then in September, twenty months after being diagnosed for cancer, things began to change. My colleague who was diagnosed together with me succumbed to the disease. Maybe this affected me psychologically for I took a turn for the worst. I lost my appetite and my body weight plummeted by twelve kilos within six weeks. My food intake was two mouthfuls at each meal and I was wasting fast. I could not walk unassisted. I suffered stomach cramps and would groan in my sleep. Then I had prolonged constipation and had to be admitted to the hospital.

Our hospitals now have many lady doctors. As an ex Colonel in the Territorial Army I was admitted to the palatial Tuanku Mirzan Military Hospital. The doctor who attended to me at the emergency ward was a lady. She told me that she was going to perform a PR on me. Not being medically trained, I thought that she was going to do some Public Relation stunt on me. She put on her rubber glove and probed my bottom! At that instant I lost my self-esteem and male dignity.

I must say she was very professional and competent. She directed me to go for an x-ray which diagnosed me as having ‘impacted stools’. That got me re-admitted again. They did their magic and very soon I felt very much relived and able to begin to take my food again.

After a week of being discharged, I was not able to urinate, another medical insult I was back in the hospital again. My Pathologist friend Col. Dr. Kuna took me there. As it was a Saturday, he told me that my urologist might take some time to come. As it was an emergency he decided to perform the procedure himself. I asked him when he had last performed this procedure. To which he replied, ‘some twenty years ago’. Well that was not very comforting but I signed the necessary papers anyway as the fluid pressure was building up. He drained out nearly a litre of urine from me. What a relief!

I was ten days in hospital convalescing. Then one morning two young nurses came and told me they were going to remove the catheter. I just lifted up my sarong to cover my face and told them to do what they wanted. They told me to take a deep breath and delicately removed it. Then they told me to accompany them to the toilet as they had to re-train me on how to urinate. Dutifully I did as I was told. I sat on the toilet bowl and they turned on the tap for sound effect, but nothing happened. Then they took turns saying ‘Shoo Shoo’ as if toilet training a child. I told them to leave me alone for a while. They could stand outside,. I found out that I still had my ‘marchioness‘ in me. I could only do it whilst standing!

TAKING UP FLYING AFTER RETIREMENT

(This article is posted here with permission from the writer, Tan Sri Ani Arope.)

I have been asked many times why I took up flying at this stage of my life. Wasn’t there a more sedate way to spend one’s retirement than to go in for something that demanded one’s full attention to master a potentially lethal set of circumstances? Well meaning friends point out that if I were adrift in the ocean, the chances of being picked up was a real possibility. Or if I were to go off on a jungle track and got lost a search and rescue team could still go searching for me.

But if something untoward happened in the cockpit whilst I was up in the air no rescue party could drop in to give me a hand. I don’t know about being cast adrift in the ocean or getting lost in the jungle. I have had my share of excitement up in the clouds and always there was a reassuring voice coming from the tower or another flyer who happened to be within radio range to give me help. I tell my well wishing friends that the most dangerous part of flying, and this is being corroborated by statistical figures, is the drive from the house to the airfield!

Flying is a great sport especially for those who want a release from their high pressure jobs. The total immersion it demands helps soak off the cares of the day. From start-up to shut-down, the time is spent on aviating, navigating and communicating. At the end of the flight, there is this sense of personal satisfaction, a useful work well accomplished and time well spent.

Those who fly enjoy the thrill of meeting up with the challenges of managing risks and equipment involved to bring themselves and their craft back to terra firma. More mid-level and top executives in the private and public sectors should consider giving it a go. If dummies like me could take to the skies at this late stage in life, there is no reason why others can’t.

YOUNG FLYERS

For the youngsters, it is good discipline. It trains leadership and responsibility. When one of my children (a hyperactive kid) was at college, how was I to guide her 8000 miles away? I encouraged her to take up flying as one of her electives, though she was majoring in Microbiology. Flying was done on Saturdays at eight in the mornings. When students turned up blurry eyed and looking under the weather, they were sent back to their dorms. So in wanting to fly there couldn’t be late Friday nights or attending boisterous student parties.

And what was more the students that took flying were the more responsible types and were a lot different from the ultra ‘holier than thou’ groups of all denominations that were rampant on the campuses then. In short if you have an ultra super active child, one way to hive off that extra energy is to channel him/her to take up flying. Under their instructor they develop discipline, leadership and responsibility. They get to meet up with flyers of different age groups and professional interests. This is good for them in their formative stage of their development.

AIRPORT PECULIARITIES

When I first received my Private Pilots’ Licence (PPL) and was able to wander off on my own, I undertook to visit most of the major airports on the East and West Coast of the Peninsular. Every airport has its own peculiarities. Coming in to land in Kota Baru, you would be warned to beware of low flying kites in the vicinity. In Langkawi, as you come in for a touchdown, a gust of wind might throw you off the center line. You would have to crab in and use the opposite rudder with a tad of power to land on one main wheel first before settling on the other.

Flying into Tioman, your circuit level is 800 feet and right hand down wind. Without being able to see the airfield which is supposed to run parallel to your flight on the right you take your cue from the checker board on the hill to make a descending right turn to base. At 600 feet you make your final approach to land. Once cleared, you give it full flaps, slow down the plane to its appropriate speed, trim and aim for the landing point.

As the ground rushes to meet you and the width of the airfield fills your windscreen, you pull up on the yoke and keep the plane flying straight and level and shifting your gaze to the far end of the airfield. As the plane sinks, you pull back on the yoke just enough to keep it flying straight with the nose pointing a little up. As the main wheels touch ground, you cut power and take the flaps off. You slow down by raising the plane’s nose and touching the breaks. You get a tremendous satisfaction when you call Tower to say ‘Bravo Delta Bravo, shutting down. Good day and thank you’. Your flying is not over until the engine is shut down, master switch is off and chocks are put in the front wheel.

DIFFERENT PLANE MODELS

There is no end to the number of different makes and models of aircraft one might eventually fly. I must admit that I have a fondness for flying different models of single engine planes. I started off with the Cessna 172, a very forgiving plane. then spent some time on the Eagle 150, a stick and rudder plane with power control on the left – pretty nippy and responsive. I had an opportunity to fly the MD3, a Malaysian manufactured plane under licensed from the Swiss. When I was visiting Italy, I had the occasion to fly the Piagio 2 Seater Trainer. Now I fly regularly on the Piper Warrior.

A Piper Warrior

CONCLUSION

Flying sharpens my mental faculties. It gives me added motivation to keep healthy as I have to appear for my medical every six months to keep my license current. So I have to watch my diet, keep myself physically fit with regular exercises. I socialize, meeting with fellow flyers ranging from 18 years to their late fifties. I get to talk to pilots and controllers whom I don’t get a chance to meet and building a sort of camaraderie up in the air.

Finally one cannot imagine the satisfaction of watching the country side roll under your wings. The perspective from on high is both powerful and humbling. The puny efforts of man to alter the landscape fade into insignificance under the leveling press of altitude. In this way, the experience of flying is reward enough.

A PEACOCK TODAY, A FEATHER DUSTER TOMORROW

“Even with a five figure salary today, you are going to be devalued overnight when you retire; a peacock today, a feather duster tomorrow! This is a tough scenario. Is it necessary to be so?” asks Tan Sri Dato’ Dr Ani Arope during his thought-provoking talk to Guthries retirees recently.

Things look pretty glum. You are in the age bracket or have reached the mandatory retirement age. There is this feeling of anxiety, of resentment and rejection. Even with the five figure salary you are drawing per month, you are just able to get by. You claim to be miserable but still in comfort. Now the future prospects seem bleak. You have heard of currency devaluation. Now this is going to happen to you. You are going to be devalued overnight. A peacock today, a feather duster tomorrow.

Most of you cannot even remember telephone numbers, as there is no need to. Your faithful PA will track down anybody you wish to speak to, in any part of the world. Some of you over the years do not even know how to use the self-service at the gas stations, check in at an airline counter or how to pay bills, let alone complete your income tax returns. As a medical doctor said in some other context, “If you don’t use it, you lose it”. Overnight these things are no more the expected and the routine. You are now Mr Nobody. This is a pretty tough scenario. Is it necessary to be so?

One of the phases that a retiree may have to go through, after the initial resentment phase of retirement, is the feeling of rejection. When he is tired of coping with the anger that comes from his perceived rejection, he tries to reduce his pain by creating what I call emotional numbness. He withdraws from society, accepts no invitations, and does not entertain visitors - he becomes very unsociable.

By identifying these phases, we can intervene and eliminate the potential problems before they balloon into destructive patterns that threaten our post retirement lives. Continue to socialize, create new network of friends and maintain the old. Share with others your experiences. Touch other people’s lives to make a positive difference in them.

If you accept that you are a has-been, then mentally, emotionally, physically, socially and spiritually you give up. Your super computer in your brain box starts to program for a shut down. Within 1,000 days, if you are on the metric system, and 3 years if you are non-metric, you exit. You have to get hold of yourself now and set up to reprogram for you to re-tyre yourself. You may not want to go onto the fast track again, but there are equally challenging avenues for you to play a role. You cannot just sit down waiting for something to happen.

You must make things happen. This is the time to activate your networking. Some may not want to know you. Leave them alone. That is their prerogative. You cannot allow yourself to stagnate. Like the car in the garage. If you choose not to start it for a week, what happens to the battery? It goes flat. Get a move on.

Spiritual development

As Solomon said, “As a man thinks in his heart, so he is.” If you think you are beaten, you are beaten. If you think you can and will make it, you will make it. Sometimes you meet some pitfalls, immediately the word failure comes in. This is often times being re-enforced by the close members of your family. Be committed to what you set to do and do it. It is not a failure, but your success is just being delayed for the better. When things do not seem to be right, this is the time to sit back and reflect and use your own spiritual power to communicate with the Almighty to show you what went wrong so that you may take corrective action.


You have a direct link to the Almighty, use it. Most of us, at some point in our lives, have been brought up on the diet of prayers and reading the holy book. But few of us know how to tap into this super energy source of power. When you are in commune with the Almighty through prayers, you should be able to visualize what you are seeking for. Now it leaves you to energize the program you set up to do in order to actualize whatever you want. The ‘prayerize’, visualize, energize and actualize procedure exerts a profound power force in the experience of the individual who has the wit to employ it.

In my life there are enough ‘spiritual’ experiences of employing this creative principle which has been responsible for seemingly incredible outcomes for me, to guide me in my career and life path. You can go back and try this procedure for yourselves to actualize what you want. There is a passage in the Quran that says that God helps those who help themselves.

Prayers help us to visualize and energize what we seek from the Almighty. This type of trying that has worked wonders must also involve the relaxed attitude towards effort when that is indicated. Sometimes we push ourselves too hard that it becomes stressful and without attaining the goals for which they have been put forth. Take a break.


Physical development

Many of us take too lightly the physical side of our being. This includes nutrition, what we eat, drink and smoke, and keeping ourselves fit and healthy. We are what we eat, drink and smoke. There is enough literature on this. What I want to emphasize here is that we have to be selective in what we eat and in moderation. Have your nasi lemak, gulai daging and your roti canai, but not every day. For our sedentary type of work, we do not require more than 2,000 calories of food intake. You have to join your staff at the canteen to see some of the heavier set of staff eat. They have the full course plus their teh tarik and they complain of being overweight and develop symptoms of JE [jantung expiring]. If they do not have this as yet, they complain that their sugar, cholesterol, and pressure levels are elevated. They wonder why.



Some on this diet seem fit. They play badminton, squash and do weight lifting [not body building] and collapse. To me they are fit but not healthy. Conversely some may be healthy but not fit. You need to have a combination of both, being fit and healthy. Some of the sports that we do are more anaerobic than aerobic. In anaerobic exercise, we do not use oxygen and consequently we maintain our weight, no matter how much workout we do. In the more aerobic sports, like walking or sports that involve a lot of deep breathing, weight reduction is more pronounced.

Remember, we are not limited by our age; we are liberated by it. The most exciting news of all is that, like all patterns that give us pleasure, moderate exercise can become a positive addiction. Many of you may want to avoid exercise. You will be more powerfully drawn to it once you discover how pleasurable it is to work out properly. I bet you that if you exercise consistently for a period of time, you will form this positive addiction for a lifetime. Even if you get off track for a while, you’ll always return to a consistent exercise regimen throughout your life. We all deserve the physical vitality that can transform the quality of our lives. Our physical destiny is intimately related to our mental, emotional, financial and relationship destinies. In fact, it will determine whether we have a destiny at all!


Mental development

Mental development must go on. Cultivate the reading habit. Our public libraries are seldom used. I surround my reclining chair with books and magazines and pick whatever reading material according to the mood that I am in. My interests range from comparative religions to geography, autobiography, battle epics from the crusades to the war in Kuwait and of course the flying magazines. Sometimes I listen to books on tape and wish I had their command of the language, whether it is in Bahasa (Malaysia), French, English or just rubbish.



Reading something of substance, something of value, something that is nurturing, something that teaches you new distinctions every day is more important than eating. Read a minimum of thirty minutes a day. You may miss a meal, but don’t miss your reading. By reading you are not limited to your own personal experiences as life references. You can borrow the references of other people. You may want to focus on those who have made it against all odds - Nelson Mandela - who had succeeded and contributed and is impacting people’s lives in a major way. Read the biographies of successful people and learn that regardless of their background or conditions, when they held on to their sense of certainty and consistently contributed, success eventually came their way.


The power of reading a great book is that you start thinking like the author. During those magical moments while you are immersed in reading “Papillon”, you are Henri Charriere. I am attracted not so much by its sensational appeal as the autobiography of a convict, but rather by its rare quality as a tale of courage, endurance and man’s unquenchable thirst for freedom; the biography of Fred Meijer who started a chain of general stores in the US, you cannot but be impressed by what he said, “Live your life so you can look in the mirror and be proud of what you see”.


You start to think like they think, feel like they feel, and use imagination as they would. Their references become your own, and you carry these with you long after you’ve turned the last page. You constantly need to expand your references.

Just to digress a little, many have asked me why I took up flying. Flying gives me a chance to learn something new that I have never been exposed to before. I wanted to learn how to handle this mechanical monstrosity and make it respond to my commands. Moreover, I had to learn subjects that have never been part of my life - subjects like aviation law, general aeronautics, radio telephony, navigation and meteorology. Let me emphasize here flying is not important. What matters is the mental, physical, emotional, social and spiritual coordination that it provides. Other sporting avenues might provide the same challenges. Find your sporting niche and do it with passion and enthusiasm.


Emotional development

In our daily lives and more so when we are about to have a late life career change, we need to take conscious control of our oscillating emotions and consciously and deliberately shape our lives. There is no success without emotional success. Emotional stability starts at home. If there is tension in the house, which there will sometimes be, you will have to sort this out with your partner. A veteran of 45 years married to the same person, to maintain your sanity, you have to make your relationship one of the highest priorities in your life; otherwise you will be taking a back seat to any or all of the other things that are happening in the work place.

Sometimes emotional conflicts come from your own makings with your other family members, your own children. You want to mould them in your own expectations. Being the authoritarian father that you are, you give them no choice but an ultimatum. Your love for them becomes conditional to their submitting to your fancies. We forget that our children were born with their own talents and interests. Our responsibility is to prepare them to face the world when we are no more around.

Give them the tools to meet these challenges. After that let them express their talents and interests to the fullest within the accepted norms of society. There shall be no withholding of our love for them. In this way we create an environment of love and respect for each other and minimize emotional conflicts.

To quote Antonio Porchia, “In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing”. You are the source of all your emotions. Nothing, and no one, can change how you feel, except yourself. If you find yourself in reaction to anything, you and only you can change the situation.


In everyday life, who decides whether you shall be happy or unhappy? It is you, and nobody else. When you get up in the morning, you have a choice - whether to be happy or unhappy. The choice is yours. When I was a kid, my grandmother was very particular how we started our day. We were chided not to start the day with a long face. Now this made sense. If you program yourself saying that “It’s going to be a tough day today” the first thing in the morning, what else do you expect the day to be?

I recall reading somewhere that Abraham Lincoln said that people were just about as happy as they made up their minds to be. You can be unhappy if you choose to be. It is the easiest thing to accomplish. Go round telling yourself that things are not going well, that nothing is satisfactory, and you can bet your last ringgit of being unhappy. But say to yourself, “Things are going well. Life is good. I choose happiness,” and you can be quite sure of having your choice.


Conclusion

Many of us make life unnecessarily difficult for ourselves and this has a snowballing effect as it affects others as well. We need to stop feeling resentful and rejected and get peaceful, if we are to have the power to live effectively. We do not realize how accelerated the rate of our lives have become, or the speed at which we have driven ourselves. Many of us are destroying our physical bodies by this pace. What is even more tragic, we are tearing our minds and souls to shreds as well.

Retirement or a late career change could be the opportunity of our first step to reduce the rate of our pace or at least the tempo of our lifestyle, and appreciate this wonderful gift of life. We could continue to contribute to society in many other ways and ask the Almighty God to make use of us until we are completely used up. Those who have retired or about to and are having difficulties coping with this new situation, need to have an attitudinal change. They have to take this as a blessing for giving them a new lease of life, thus enabling them to re-tyre themselves for their new role.

Lastly we have to remember we are mere actors acting out our roles on this world stage. In acting out our roles, we make our entrances and at the appropriate time make our exits. Commit yourselves to acting out your roles in life with gusto and deserving success and you will find a reward you have not bargained for - a crowning glory of a full life well lived.


(Postscript: The above speech is reproduced here with permission from the late Tan Sri Ani Arope, Malaysia's first Fulbright scholar, and former Chairman of TNB. I merely added the images and quotes sourced from the internet.)