Year of Restoration

In the blink of an eye, it is now a new year – 2024. December passed by in a flash, and till now, I can’t believe its 2024. To end the year, I was given a chance to share a short paragraph of my testimony in church. I wish I had more time, for always, all I want to do is to tell the whole world of what He has done. I wrote a 3.5 page testimony, unable to shorten it any shorter. Those 4 main events I wanted to talk about were just on the amazing things God has done from the start of my journey till now. I kept struggling to shorten it, as I felt it wouldn’t do God justice. What He has done is so much more, and already I’ve only taken out the main points. To tell everyone all about what He has done. I am glad though, that this wasn’t the only sharing I had done this year. The Chinese version of the FIC was a great recording, where we all just spent hours praising God, sharing about what he has done for us. I guess, I can go on and on all day about all of them. Was so glad to meet the team from UK, who flew to Singapore for an event and scheduled an interview with a few of us. Pray that these testimonies will bless even more globally. I can’t wait for more opportunities to share about what God has done for me. Pray that He will bring more of such days in 2024.

Indeed, since 2022, it has been a period of restoration for me. The year started out with uncertainty. The place I had thought I would work at for a long time, suddenly announced they were moving to a place 1.5 hours away from the current place. I had to make the tough decision to quit, and started the year without a job in sight. Decided to take on an introductory course to programming in March, then later on took up the full time bootcamp end May. Graduated from the 4 month long bootcamp in September, while going through these:

• 6 target therapy sessions
• 1 covid
• 1 influenza A
• 2 hospital stays
• 1 hand food mouth disease
• 4 months long post covid symptoms – rashes
• 2 funerals

Isn’t it amazing that every time when I look back at my life on hindsight, I find that it is crazier than what I remembered it to be. I honestly don’t remember sometimes, and when I read what I wrote, I too am taken by surprise. Perhaps this is how it is when our mind isn’t fixed on the surroundings of this earthly life, but on who we are in Christ and what He thinks of us. To God, we are all pearls of great price. We were all redeemed and paid for and set free. As long as we are willing, this is all for us!

I had wanted to post this post in the first week of January, as well as to wish everyone here a very Blessed New Year. Thank you to all of you, for walking with me on this journey, encouraging me in every way. Thanks to those who write me notes, email me, send me encouragement, or even just leave a hug. I have never met most of you in real life, nor have I even spoken to most of you. Yet, I thank God every day for each and every one of you. It isn’t easy to walk with a cancer patient and see all they go through. Many people just aren’t willing to witness it all. I’ve lost friends, I’ve lost close ones who just didn’t know how to talk to me anymore. I was heartbroken when it happened, couldn’t understand it, but now I think I do. I wish to encourage all of you though, that even with cancer, we are still the same. Many of us want to be treated the same. To stop contact with us just because you don’t know what to say isn’t a great reason. We can all say anything we want! We may not like what you say, and we may tell you that, but that’s what friends do anyway, right? We get on each others nerves, we step on each others toes. We may fight, argue, disagree, but at the end of the day, we will make up and again be laughing at it together. So don’t deprive us of that journey just because cancer happened. Thank you all, who are still here with me, through all the ups and downs. Thank God I have you all. Thank God that I have Him too.

Sometimes when I look back at the past few years, I cry. I remember all the pains, remember all the tough times, and how God’s love shone through it all. I do wonder, was it because I had to be emptied to receive? But then I guess most of us have to. Because we are already too full. Only when we are emptied, then there is space to receive.

The past few weeks I have been struggling. This is also the reason why this post is late. The changes brought about by the government’s introduction of the cancer drug list CDL, were just too much. It affected patients already on treatment, affected those who were newly diagnosed and didn’t have time to get the riders. I must admit I am disappointed and do not understand why the contract I signed wasn’t honored. I do understand the need to keep drug prices affordable, yet I’m unsure why the terms of what I have signed for when I was healthy, are changed in the midst of treatment. Unlike many others, quite a few of my friends and I were diagnosed before the changes were announced. We were not eligible to top up cover, nor buy or change to better plans that were later introduced because of the changes. When I got my insurance in my twenties, I got the best plan available. It was 100% all covered. A few years ago, after I had started treatment, the 5% mandatory copayment was introduced and existing plans suddenly had coverage reduced. Last year the cancer drug list was introduced and what used to be 95% coverage regardless of bill, now had a maximum claim of $12000 a month. To make matters worse, every insurer covered differently. Some allowed up to 25x coverage, while some like mine, only covered up to 5x coverage, which led to a sum of $12000 for the drugs I’m on. In October 2023, the first month after these changes were introduced for people already on treatment (it was introduced in April 2023 for the rest), I was suddenly slapped with a close to $8000 bill. My payment had always been $200 – $300 for every round of treatment, so this new bill was way over the top. Neither my oncologist nor I was prepared. We decided to reduce the treatments to monthly treatments to not exceed the cap of $12000 per month. I went home, decided to check through my bills and to my horror, I found a small paragraph that said I was off transitional cover because I didn’t fulfil one of the three conditions. They were to not be in remission, to not change to any new drugs, and to not stop treatment for longer than 3 months. Since Sep 2021, I had been on cancer treatment after it recurred. From Dec 2022, I had been using the same drugs, Herceptin and Perjeta. As a stage 4, I would never be considered to be in remission medically. I just didn’t understand which condition I had failed to fulfil. I called to check and it was because of a new drug they claimed had been added in October 2023. That drug was prednisolone. A search on google will tell you its a steroid or a form of corticosteroids. Yet somehow it is found on the Cancer Drug List and listed as for cancer treatment. That meant that my insurer could just treat it as a change of treatment (regardless of what it was prescribed for) and insist I had changed my chemo regimen. I was found speechless. I didn’t understand why a steroid was on that list, for I thought only chemo drugs were. I didn’t even know that it was being used to treat cancer. I really don’t like fights, but I feel that this is a fight I had to take on. It just didn’t sound right. I lodged a case with the Ministry of Health, and also wrote it on my sns account. Prednisolone is very much affordable. It shouldn’t even cause more than $50 if not $100 a month. I had lost my transitional cancer coverage, simply because I had received medicine for rashes due to covid. It wasn’t even in any way related to cancer. After I had made all the appeals, I broke down.

I broke down because this meant that I would have to scrutinize every drug from now on, every drug given to me by my oncologist, for whatsoever reason. I can’t just accept whatever that has been given to me. Any drug chemo drug or not, that is on the CDL I would have to reject. Any drug that can give my insurer any reason to not pay due to the CDL, I would have to reject. I broke down because I know this is gonna be a long fight. A lonely fight perhaps. Families with no cancer patients on treatment wouldn’t understand. Perhaps, even the rich wouldn’t understand as they can still afford all bills. A bill of $8000 a month may not mean much to them. To us, it is many times our household income. I cried. I pleaded with God to take over once again. It’s times like this that I know nothing I do would make a difference. Though this has been a common topic at support group meetings, everyone felt helpless, for there was nothing we could do. The only thing that comforts me then, is that Jesus knows. God knows. And one day they will make all things right.

Don’t get me wrong. Despite all these, I still believe in insurance. 90% coverage is definitely better than 0%. So please, please remember to check out your hospitalization insurance and increase your coverage if you are healthy. Please do not wait till something happens to do so. It will be too late by then and the problem gets more complicated if one doesn’t have insurance cover when diagnosed. I can’t get mine anymore, so please get yours, just because you still can.

The past six months definitely hasn’t been easy. After graduation from the bootcamp, a close family friend passed away. He is the son of my nanny, and we kind of have lost contact over the years, especially since I moved overseas. I received the news the day right after my graduation presentation and I didn’t know what to feel. He had been on my mind while I was rushing the final project and I had told myself I’d reach out right after I graduate. And I was too late. Apparently two weeks ago, he had suddenly collapsed in the midst of a lecture and never woke up. The strokes hit one after another, and he was gone. He had reached out to me while I was in Korea, after my diagnosis. He raised money amongst his friends and had sent it to me, blessing us with it. To me he was always a man of few words, but when we came back, he brought us out in the first few weeks to buy stuff, told us about Decathlon. It was then I found out he was a Christian too. But, it was only when his eulogies were read at the wake, did I realize he was an amazing Christian. He served in the church board diligently for decades, was a man of integrity and humility. For the last few months of his life, he also transitioned from a banker to a teacher, after his early retirement. And he was a well loved, respected teacher. The students whom had just known him flooded the wake. They cried when they saw him, as they mourned the loss of a great teacher. To them, he was someone who cared for his students. I was sad I didn’t get the chance to chat about God with him. I was sad I didn’t get to hear all his stories, his walk with God. It would have been so nice. I do look forward to seeing him again in Heaven one day, then it would be time to hear all the stories too.

Three days after his funeral ended, we received a call around 830pm at night. Chang’s dad, my father-in-law had passed away peacefully all of a sudden. We were in shock, but we had no time to mourn. We put all on hold, and searched for flights. Flights back to Korea. We asked for prayer from our whatsapp groups. While I booked the flights, Chang tried to pack and get the little one ready. The earliest flights were at 2am and we got them. We packed crazily, and thankfully a dear friend who lived nearby offered to send us to the airport. The little one was excited, thinking he would see his cousins soon. Both Hwan and I had all sorts of thoughts running through our mind, and were both in a state of shock. Praise be to God, we got to Korea safely and were at the wake the next morning. Thanks to Korea government’s awesome services, the little one was put in a 365 daycare program, where rates were hourly and subsidized. The place closest to us under this program was not too far off, and was a decent government accredited daycare, with 5 vacancies a day. Upon arrival in Incheon, we took a cab to home, set down our luggages, changed into suitable clothes and left. No shower, no time to freshen up or have a meal, we got there as fast as we could. The little one was exhausted, having slept only a few hours on the flight. We paid our respects, then I rushed off to drop the little one at the daycare. It was surreal, trying to navigate the public transport after so long. Everything seemed so familiar yet so distant. The little one was reluctant but I knew I had to leave him at the daycare. His cousins were with their grandparents (sister’s in-laws), so there was no way we could find immediate help. I did try to contact all the groups I knew, but the families who could take him were out of town on holiday. It was also impossible to keep him at the wake, for Korean wakes are unlike Singaporean wakes. Family typically stays there for the whole length of the wake and there are no children. The room we were given was also quite small and totally bare, so the little one would have nothing to entertain him with. Just when I was contemplating putting him at the daycare for the rest of the wake, a family offered to take him. The little one had stayed with them before when he was 10 months old, and he had played well with their son who was about a year older. I got to know Dan, the father when he interviewed me right after my diagnosis. We had kept in touch and they helped us to take care of the little one when I was hospitalized for treatment in Korea. I knew the little one would be in great hands, so I agreed immediately. With that being taken care of, I could focus on being there for the family during the wake. It wasn’t easy for Chang’s sister, especially since she was Dad’s sole caregiver after we were gone. Having been away from Korea for more than a year, I had to get used to all the customs again. Because everything was so quick, I don’t think we had any time to properly process our grief. It didn’t really hit us that Dad was gone, until his body laid out in front of us before the final day. His body was cold, straight from the morgue and our hearts broke. Despite being a daughter-in-law, I had treated him like my dad. I wrote him letters every year, we traveled with him, and I would hug him every time I saw him. I loved holding his hand, trying different foods with him. When people saw us in Korea, they would always ask if he was my dad. To suddenly lose him like this, and not have the chance to talk to him, was really tough. We lost that chance to talk with him after his fall in 2021 March. He never recovered and was immobile since then, unable to eat, talk or respond. It was indeed better for him this way, to go back to our heavenly home, than to remain here in this broken body. Yet, we were selfish. We wanted to keep him here and hold him a little longer. Just when I was upset we didn’t do enough for him as his children, the Lord gave me a vision in the morgue. I saw Dad standing beside Jesus, looking as he always did, giving us that fatherly smile. He told me that it was okay, to let him go. That he was proud of us and we have done enough. I later shared this vision with the whole family and hopefully it gives everyone closure and peace. Again, I look forward to the day we’ll meet again in Heaven. We thank God though, that the timing of everything was actually quite perfect. Dad passed away at a time when the whole family could return. I had just finished a chemo session a day ago, and the youngest sister could return from New Zealand with the children as it was the start of their school holidays. Dad chose the most perfect timing, for all his children and grandchildren to be there.

Right after we came back, I started coding again. One month of no code left me quite lost, and I needed time to get back into what I learned. Now, I’m in the midst of my job search, and I find myself struggling sometimes. Do I, or do I not tell my employer about my diagnosis? I know I am not required to by law, but is it right of me to keep it from them? At times like this, I am thankful I know who I am in Christ. I know that cancer didn’t decrease or take away my worth and my worth is not determined by all I can see on this earth. I thank God that the things that are unseen are eternal, and the things that are seen are temporary.

Before 2023 ended, we had the most amazing holiday in Singapore with Chang’s sister and her family from Korea. It was an unexpected trip and we hosted them at our place. We in turn, moved to my mom’s place. It was amazing because the little ones bonded and played with each other every day. The little one learned to play with his cousins and learned to share, love and give. It was a great feeling having them over, being able to visit places together and share meals together. Wish we lived closer and could see each other often. Then our kids can grow up together.

On Monday, we have a big appointment to go to. We have been plagued by mold a few months after we moved into this rental flat. We were very blessed to have gotten this flat, so we didn’t think much of it, until we started falling sick one by one. In the beginning of last year, after the little one’s GP told us he was concerned that he had respiratory issues every month. Very soon, I realize that other than me, the other two were falling sick often. To my horror, I soon realized the mold had overtaken our ceiling in the living room and the bedroom. The only place with no ceiling, was the kitchen. Even the bathroom had water stains on the ceiling, which could have indicated a leak in the pipes up there. But when we contacted owner, we were told they could only paint over it. Hence, we appealed to change to a new flat. The wait took 1 year for it to be approved, so it was only approved last week. It would be another 6 months wait to get transferred to a new flat. My husband and I both have 1 wish at this moment, which is to move out of this place. Imagine our pleasant surprise, when we got approved for the PPHS scheme! We also got a queue number at our first try, and would be going down to select our flat next Monday. Please keep us in your prayers, as we move for better living conditions, and for the little one’s school registration next year July. In the blink of an eye, the little pea is now turning 5 this year. And he will turn 6 next year and enter elementary school in 2026. Our current place does not have any school within the next 1km, so we hope to move to a place with a school within 1 km, since this will affect ballot results. As we were checking out all the places, I soon realized we only had about 5 flats we could consider due to location to schools. Among that list, we fell in love with our first choice. It’s location, the peace we felt, the proximity to an awesome Christian school. Please pray that we can move into this place, we so deeply yearn for. A place where we can call home at least for the next 4 years. Through all this striving, all this doing, I had to keep reminding myself that the Lord already has a place for us, a school for the little one.

The little one has grown so much, he amazes us with words of wisdom sometimes. Just three days ago, he suddenly told me, “Omma, sometimes things don’t go the way we want, right? And it is okay.” At that moment, Dad had dropped something in the kitchen and was a little upset. Before I could say anything back, the little one said wait, he had to go tell dad something. He went to Dad and said the exact same thing. And told Dad its ok. Don’t be angry. Because we have God. Dad laughed. How did such things come out from a 4 year old? I praise God for the wisdom of the little one. I thank God that he is healthy, growing up well, and loving God. All I wish for, is for the little one to grow up wisely and healthily in the house of the Lord. That would mean so much to both Chang and me. Looking at the photo of Chang and me below, don’t you think it looks great? That was the first photo the little one took of us.

Somehow, I wish that the CDL saga can end soon, but I think it will take a while. Please pray with me on this, that the insurers will honor what is right and not abuse their power. Let us pray for all the cancer patients past, present and future, that they will have God with them on their journey, and may He bless all of us with the eyes to see the good He is doing in our lives. Let us not be blind and see only our lack, not the good. Stay blessed everyone. We love you. God loves you.