Our Principles of Care for Dad

When Dad was first diagnosed with cancer on 6 October Everyone of us took the news very badly. While many friends asked how old Dad is and often expressed comfort that he has lived a long life - our perspective at the initial news was - that he is too old to have to suffer this disease.

In the midst of our emotional turmoil and mental anguish, my siblings and I conferred and established three core principles of care for him.

First, medically - we will seek to ensure that Dad receives the best palliative care available - the objective is to have minimal pain arising from his symptoms. The overall objective is to contain any metastasis so as not to impair his quality of life.

Second, lifestyle wise - Dad should be given the best quality of life he can physically enjoy. We will target to spend quality time with him. His level of functionality should be as high as is achievable.

Thirdly, spiritually - we would in our own ways make it a foundation of our care for him. We have Buddhists and Christians as well as Taoists in the family. However, our prayers are consistent - that he should have No Pain, High Comfort and Good Appetite. He should be always filled with happy and positive thoughts throughout most part of the day.

We all agreed that this cannot be achieved without close collaboration and co-operation with the team of doctors. Our principles were also shared with them too.

As children, we are cognizant of the fact that much of Dad's life quality hinges on his mental and emotional states. We can help him achieve a high level of these by showing him our love and concern. For him, it is also important that he not only sees but feels that we are united and cohesive in our approach towards the care of him and particularly Mom.

Financially, I had since a decade ago - signed them up for Medishield (subsequently converted to Incomeshield). We have reiterated this to him so that mentally, he has one issue less to deal with.

Amongst us as siblings, we also have worked out the deployment of our resources so that no one is particularly stretched. Those who are able to render support in whichever way would pick up the slack where the others are unable to.

We are fortunate as the decades of our parents' relatively good health had allowed us to build our careers as well as our financial nest eggs. They have always been the kind of parents who never want to be a burden and bother to their kids - that had given us ample focus on our careers as well as to start our own families, raise our own kids and build our own homes.