Noelnadesan's Blog

Shyamala’s birthday speech.

My grandson 7 years old Kiyaan a few weeks ago brought his write-up on his holiday in Phillip Island for me to read. After reading I told him that you did not write why you went there

He replied Yes, yes, I know 5 W

Tell me, ‘’   I said’’

“What, who, where, when, and Why”

I said to him, “I only knew I was 40 years old when I was running the paper”

We are learning every day, even from our grandchildren             

Thank you to all My dear friends attending our celebration of Shiamala’s birthday and living with 5 years of healing from her life-threatening illness this year, are very important for us too. We met in the year 1973 since then we are here up now. Unlike many, I am a firm believer in today, not tomorrow because only today is in our control tomorrow may not always be ours.

You might have good teachers in School and university but the best teacher for us is experience. When we were going through the crisis I did was, selling both our business and house. It took us to build all those things for 25 years. It was not easy as you know we worked for 6 days and in addition I did a community new paper and 7 books.

When our physical and mental well-being is on the road material wealth becomes immaterial, but we are so lucky Shiamala recovered and we are back again with the help of many friends.

I am happy to mention three names here:  Kirupa helped find the orthopedic surgeon,  Dr. Naren counseling and Le for finding the best haemato–oncologist for the second opinion, and there are many who are not mention here.  We are somewhat privileged and lucky with many good friends.

This is why we thought we would help other people in need in Sri Lanka in a similar situation. But we can have good intentions but not easy to implement. We could have donated some money to charity and feel good, but we will not know where the money goes and whether the money reaches the deserved.

It took almost two years to get the work going

Finally, my Peradeniya batch mates who were retired from the university and the government service volunteered to help me, namely Dr. Neville Silva, Dr Niranjala De Silva and Dr. Pushpa Wijayawantha, and writer Sivaraja Karunakaran. We formed a foundation as Dr Shiamala Nadesan cancer welfare foundation.

We were also fortunate to get help from oncologists in Kandy and Jaffna.  They recommend deserving people.  We initially helped at the grassroots level buy cancer medicine, nutritional supplements, and transport costs.

In the process, we found a few things about the cancer situation in Srilanka.

Sri Lanka is lucky to have good cancer treatment facilities and medical personnel.  They are doing a great service, but the issue is the people do not have money to go to the hospital. Medicine or getting not good nutrition during the treatment time additionally family losing income if the cancer victim was the breadwinner.

Another important issue is prevalent cancer in Sri Lanka is oral cancer due to chewing betel, Areca nut, and tobacco makes cancer entirely preventable

We only help a small number of people and we can cope with the movement with voluntary effort.