How to live with lupus

The purpose of this blog is to express my gratitude to a wonderful friend who has saved my life and brought me back to health. This wonderful and special friend is Billy Wang who is a cancer warrior himself. And because of what Billy has done, I am eternally grateful and I hope that by sharing my story, I am paying it forward to help others. For more information about Billy Wang, visit his website http://www.billywang.com.sg/

I got to know Billy Wang from listening to his radio programme in 2002. At that time, my health was dwindling because of my SLE condition or commonly known as Lupus marked with nephritis and liver cirrhosis. No matter how much medication was administered to control this chronic illness, my health was not getting any better because of the side effects of these strong medicines and I seemed to be loosing control of my life. I really was.

One day, I was on my way to the hospital for my checkup, the cab driver was listening to Billy Wang’s radio program and he was talking about green lemon and its benefits - how it can helped to boost one’s immune system. Guess what? I was listening so intently that when I got off the cab, I forgot to ask which station was that and all I know was - “it’s a Chinese station and don’t know who?” Imagine the next few days, tuning in to the radio to find out how many Chinese stations were there and then the time slot of this ‘chap’ etc. I am not someone who listens to the radio and the only station that I know is FM95 and 933. It really took me quite a while to find the right frequency! When I finally got it right, Mediacorp Radio Love 97.2FM from 10am Mondays to Fridays. Boy was I elated!

I remembered my first day, I was really excited! Firstly, I’m listening to a Chinese Radio Station, that’s really a big deal you know! Secondly, I’m actually trying to copy down the information on health and recipes. Imagine if you were like me, English-educated and hardly speak Mandarin and only speaking it occasionally when ordering food at hawker centres, it was ‘hanyu pinyin’ in whatever my mind can come up with and trying to catch this ’speedy Gonzales - ‘Dongfang Billy’ of course. Mostly, I can’t figured out what I’ve written! My next wise move, find a recorder - which I did.

When I first listened in August 2002, most listeners could fax to him for help on questions regarding cancer, health-related problems and even family-related problems. “Got such a programme meh?” I found out later that these were the extra efforts on Billy’s part. I thought: “Wow!, this person is so caring and helpful. He is like a light at the end of a dark tunnel!” So I wrote to Billy for help about my Lupus condition, my letter was written in English because I did not know how to write in Chinese. I wondered if he would reply ….. he did!

And that was the beginning of our friendship …

Next … let me share with you the story of my life struggle living with Lupus