Thriving & Celebrating Life...

I was well enough to travel for work!  I couldn't do any travel the whole of 2018 but 2019 yahooo! Paris was never the place in my bucket list, and I have been here before.  But something extra special this time, as Azwat joined me! Well, he explored the whole of Paris while I worked my ass off :-) After my event was over and every guests left, I had an extra 2 days to spend time with Azwat and it was magical!   We explored places on scooter and of course walked everywhere.  In such a short time, we did all these: Watched the Eiffel Tower Twinkling at Night Had sandwich at Trocadéro Experienced the River Seine Cruise Saw the Monalisa at Musee du louvre  Walk through Montmartre Climbed the Sacre Coeur Basilica Bought myself a YSL handbag hehehe! Amazing couple of days with Azwat.  Can't wait to travel to other places with him  

In a way I consider myself lucky.  Since young, I never really enjoyed any type of meat.  After being diagnosed with cancer, I read that I have to make sure my body is not acidic as cancer thrives in acidic environment. Meat is acidic.  So naturally, this is the one thing to avoid.  When I was going through chemotherapy, doctors and nurses' advise to me was I can eat anything I want, as I need the energy to fight this.  This is true, I do need the energy but this is also conflicted from what I know my body needs.  I know I can get the energy from a lot of sources other than meat, so I embarked on the no-meat diet from there on.  I doubled up vegetables and had some fish. The menu was simple in the beginning, as chemo killed my taste buds.  The only prominent taste that I could tolerate was sour.  It's not advisable to eat out, so I cooked myself mostly.  Having a typical Asian taste buds, my menu was like this: Brown Rice Porri...

My motto is - Drink water like fish.  I have minimum 3 litres of water a day.  In between, I drink fresh fruit juices like water.  Kangen Water Yes, there are some controversial feedback on Kangen Water. But what is Kangen Water?  Kangen Water is basically alkalized water.... and cancer hates alkaline environment.  I believe in this theory, and this is what I take everyday for 3 years now. Juices There are 4 types of juices I consume religiously, one type a day.  All these are done with my old faithful Hurom Slow Juicer. 1.  Red (Beetroot, green apple, carrot & lemon) 2.  Orange (Carrot, green apple, lemon, garlic, turmeric & black pepper) 3.  Green (Cucumber, celery, green apple, broccoli, lemon, ginger & garlic) 4.  Pure Celery Juice Lemongrass & Ginger Water There are days I drink 1L of this water, along with plain water and juices.  I boil lemongrass and ginger and the aroma makes me feel like I'm ...

Cancer cells love sugar! That is why refined carbohydrates like white sugar, white flour, high fructose corn syrup and soft drinks are dangerous for anyone trying to prevent or reverse cancer.  It is in my opinion that it's best to avoid sugar altogether. Sugar feeds tumors and encourages cancer growth. Cancer cells uptake sugar at 10-12 times the rate of healthy cells.  In fact, that is the basis of PET scans -- one of the most accurate tools for detecting cancer growth.   PET scans use radioactively labeled glucose to detect sugar-hungry tumor cells.  When patients drink the sugar water, it gets preferentially taken up into the cancer cells and they light up! I am for sure have had a beautiful relationship with sugar all my life.  It was certainly the hardest for me to change.  But I did it.  There were several major changes I made in surviving this battle:   No more cakes, pies, all other desserts I loved.  I started making change...

Krabi is just magical!  I love that it's so close to Malaysia, only 1.5 hours flight and we're there! I've always wanted to go to Krabi, and she didn't disappoint me at all.  Everywhere I looked, simply breathtaking.  Food was amazing, massage of course great! Everyday I would buy fresh cut pineapple and just savour it.  We explored different islands and really, I am just amazed with the beauty. This is the one place I must go back.    

A regular pet scan showed that the cancer has spread to different parts of my body.  To treat this, I changed to a new oncologist as she was very thorough with her plans to treat me. To fight this, I will be on Kadcyla targeted therapy for a long time.  As I am now a Stage 4 cancer patient, there isn't any cure but this treatment is to block the growth and spread of cancer, thus prolonging my life. Kadcyla (pronounced Kad-cy-la), also known as trastuzumab emtansine, is a targeted therapy for the treatment of advanced HER2-positive breast cancer.  This is given to patients that have already received treatment with other HER2 targeted therapies such as Herceptin and Perjeta. Basically Kadcyla is a combination of Herceptin and chemotherapy given as a single treatment. This type of treatment is called an antibody-drug conjugate.  I get Kadcyla every 3 weeks.  And, it's very expensive, even with the special patient assist program by Roche Pharmaceutical.  If I'm...

I went through 33 times radiation treatment.  No joke, it was 33 times - done daily from Monday to Friday. To go through it, I was given a tattoo at the place for the radiation to be targeted at.   The process radiation was super fast.  Everything happens within 30 mins from the moment I arrive, change to the hospital robe, lie down on the machine, stay still, done, change clothes and go.  30 mins tops! First week was easy peasy.  Didn't feel a thing. Second week, I felt tired and hot hot hot! Third week onwards I was seriously fatigued and slowly my skin burnt.   At the end, the pain was unbearable. I was juggling work while going through this.  It wasn't easy. Azwat brought me for a short trip to The Shorea after the end of radiation.  Beautiful place but I slept most of the time.