Support for Mod's final days with dignity
Donation protected
The most beautiful heart I know needs comfort during her third and final battle with cancer.
My dear friend Mod, Pattranan Charoenboonna, has spent the last 13 years battling breast and ovary cancer. And now, she fights an overwhelming assault – cancer that has spread to her liver, lungs, bones and her brain – and a cascade of complications that accompany such an assault. Mod will lose this battle and she hasn’t much time left. Her friends, family and I are fighting to give her some comfort from the onslaught of pain she is suffering by helping her stay in hospital without breaking the finances of the family she has given everything to. In a way, we are also fighting Mod herself, who would forego the comfort and care she is receiving now by leaving the hospital in order to spare expense for her family.
The money we will raise will pay for palliative care at Cancer Alliance Hospital in Thailand, in these, her last months or weeks of life. The money will also help defray some of the massive expense Mod has incurred already.
My dear, beautiful stubborn friend is unaware of our efforts. So, this is our sacred, secret mission - and we would do anything to help her. If you knew her, you would know why.
I met Mod when I was 12 at middle school. She was one of 6 of us - a tightknit squad of friends for 30 years, still close despite being scattered from Chonburi to Sydney to NY to North Carolina. Mod was the smallest of all of us physically, but she was the toughest of us all. She pulled no punches and could be brutally sarcastic. We all delighted in her wicked sense of humour and her straight-from-the-heart way of speaking. But there was something more that made us all love and respect Mod.
Out of all of us, and before any of us, Mod understood the real world. Like all of us she could revel in pop culture or boy talk and gossip. But unlike the rest of us, she felt the burden of responsibility to take care of her family early on. Mod was the one who had to grow up first. She would model for us as a group our Asian tradition to support family.
As young girls growing up in Thailand, Mod showed us the reality of responsibility. And for the past 13 years, as we all grew into our own stories as women, Mod showed us more. She showed us beauty, strength and grace as she fought for her life -- twice.
The first time, she was 29, pursuing her career as a translator and expert in Japanese language. Mod found a lump in her breast, and the diagnosis was breast cancer. She fought back and underwent surgery. And all the while, she never stopped working and supporting her stepparents.
During her second battle with cancer, she drove herself to chemo and radiation appointments, going back to work the next day, never asking for help from any of us… she would say “if I can walk, I will do it myself.”
Now in her third and final battle, she is teaching us again. How to face up to the ultimate reality – our own mortality. In all these 13 years of battling the pain and insult of cancer, she didn’t complain to us. She didn’t cry to us. And she still will not.
Complaining is not her way. Her life has been a story of dreams deferred. The dream to travel, to visit Switzerland… and especially Japan where she could make use of the language skill she takes such pride in. The dream of a big house – the dream of aiming her beautiful heart at her own family. All these beautiful dreams put on hold so she could care for her family and fight a recurring nightmare battle with cancer.
But there is one dream she has shared with us along the way that we hope to help her realize. She confided that she wants if for only a short time to have herself back – a sense of normalcy, or dignity. The ability to catch her breath once more and to say goodbye to us all in a clear-eyed way, or at least in a way that isn’t beset by agony. Mod is the most private of all of us five lifelong friends, but before she leaves us, I want to tell her that her example is the most intimate gift she could ever have given us.
It’s my hope that we can give her that.
Please give and share this with your friends and your network. Thank you very much.
My dear friend Mod, Pattranan Charoenboonna, has spent the last 13 years battling breast and ovary cancer. And now, she fights an overwhelming assault – cancer that has spread to her liver, lungs, bones and her brain – and a cascade of complications that accompany such an assault. Mod will lose this battle and she hasn’t much time left. Her friends, family and I are fighting to give her some comfort from the onslaught of pain she is suffering by helping her stay in hospital without breaking the finances of the family she has given everything to. In a way, we are also fighting Mod herself, who would forego the comfort and care she is receiving now by leaving the hospital in order to spare expense for her family.
The money we will raise will pay for palliative care at Cancer Alliance Hospital in Thailand, in these, her last months or weeks of life. The money will also help defray some of the massive expense Mod has incurred already.
My dear, beautiful stubborn friend is unaware of our efforts. So, this is our sacred, secret mission - and we would do anything to help her. If you knew her, you would know why.
I met Mod when I was 12 at middle school. She was one of 6 of us - a tightknit squad of friends for 30 years, still close despite being scattered from Chonburi to Sydney to NY to North Carolina. Mod was the smallest of all of us physically, but she was the toughest of us all. She pulled no punches and could be brutally sarcastic. We all delighted in her wicked sense of humour and her straight-from-the-heart way of speaking. But there was something more that made us all love and respect Mod.
Out of all of us, and before any of us, Mod understood the real world. Like all of us she could revel in pop culture or boy talk and gossip. But unlike the rest of us, she felt the burden of responsibility to take care of her family early on. Mod was the one who had to grow up first. She would model for us as a group our Asian tradition to support family.
As young girls growing up in Thailand, Mod showed us the reality of responsibility. And for the past 13 years, as we all grew into our own stories as women, Mod showed us more. She showed us beauty, strength and grace as she fought for her life -- twice.
The first time, she was 29, pursuing her career as a translator and expert in Japanese language. Mod found a lump in her breast, and the diagnosis was breast cancer. She fought back and underwent surgery. And all the while, she never stopped working and supporting her stepparents.
During her second battle with cancer, she drove herself to chemo and radiation appointments, going back to work the next day, never asking for help from any of us… she would say “if I can walk, I will do it myself.”
Now in her third and final battle, she is teaching us again. How to face up to the ultimate reality – our own mortality. In all these 13 years of battling the pain and insult of cancer, she didn’t complain to us. She didn’t cry to us. And she still will not.
Complaining is not her way. Her life has been a story of dreams deferred. The dream to travel, to visit Switzerland… and especially Japan where she could make use of the language skill she takes such pride in. The dream of a big house – the dream of aiming her beautiful heart at her own family. All these beautiful dreams put on hold so she could care for her family and fight a recurring nightmare battle with cancer.
But there is one dream she has shared with us along the way that we hope to help her realize. She confided that she wants if for only a short time to have herself back – a sense of normalcy, or dignity. The ability to catch her breath once more and to say goodbye to us all in a clear-eyed way, or at least in a way that isn’t beset by agony. Mod is the most private of all of us five lifelong friends, but before she leaves us, I want to tell her that her example is the most intimate gift she could ever have given us.
It’s my hope that we can give her that.
Please give and share this with your friends and your network. Thank you very much.
Organizer
Kannika Beck
Organizer
Ingleside, NSW