A Thought

When recently my brother-in-law Dr. Sabri Mohd Rejab, or better still to reclassify our relationship , my brother , considering that we have been that much close after all these years from the old College days, suddenly told us that he would have to undergo a kidney operation on Tuesday 25th November, to do away with same since it has malignant cancer, the news came as a shock to all of us. We are told that there is no cure for it other than getting rid of it in order to prevent it spreading to other parts of the body. In fact, his lungs could possibly be affected already since he has a smoking history. If the operation itself is alarming, the post theraphy treatment is even worst. It will cost him MR 24,000.00 a month for that special medicine which he will have to take in order to contain the disease from spreading to other parts of his body - ALL his life. He says this is the latest anti-cancer drug in the market with the unique property and ability to only kill cancer cells and leaving other cells undamaged or intack.

When this unexpected news are made known to family members and friends, Sabri receives numerous concerned calls as well as sms from everywhere but from amongst these, to my mind, nothing can be more touching than what I now publish for this week's "news" . Here it is :-

From: sabri dad
Date: November 21, 2008 7:54:05 AM CST
To: Ainiah
Subject: Re: Best wishes for tok wa!

hi Aisya
thank you for your well wishes !
I will let you know after surgery how things went INSHAALLAH
I am a bit breathless following your daily activities especially with
your flipping , ballet and best of all your ikraq .
I very much appreciate your prayer as well as your mama's amd abah's
love to all
tok wa

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Ainiah wrote:

Dearest Tok Wa

i heard that you are not well and is going in for surgery next week. i want you to know that abah, mama and I will pray for a successful surgery and a speedy recovery. We hope everything goes well for you and tokwa. We miss you and we hope to see you insyallah next year for aunty sabrina's wedding.

i am in Walt Disney Magnet School in the preK program. My teacher's name is Ms Crawford and the other teacher's name is Ms Arcelia. I have many friends in class and we play together 5 days a week! Every morning i have to get up by 7am and get dressed and eat breakfast and sit on the potty and brush my teeth and comb my hair before heading out the door. Mama is always hurrying me along. sometimes Abah will drop me off to school when he has to go downtown for work. Otherwise mama will send me to school. my school starts at 8am and i am done by 10.30am.

After school on mondays i attend a reading class. I am learning how to read now! Ms Peggy says i am doing well. On Tuesdays i am in a playgroup with 4 other friends and we play together in the afternoons. On Wednesday i am also in another playgroup but we have not met each other since Halloween because my friends now attend school too and they are too tired to get together after that. On thursdays i have ballet with Ms Jillian at the chicago park district. I love ballet. I can do quite a few ballet steps now. On Friday i have gymnastics with Ms Jillian again. she teaches both ballet and gymnastics. for gymnastics i can now do forward and backward flips, the balance beam, uneven bars and am working on cartwheels and hand stands. I always need a drink after both classes.

On saturdays and sundays abah and mama will usually take me somewhere but if they dont then i stay home and play. sometimes i have friends over to the house too. I am also doing my iqra' and i can read up to "kha" all by myself! I also sit and listen to mama read the quran sometimes and pray with my abah and mama. I shall pray extra hard for you tok wa. Please get well soon.

i shall try to send you a get well card soon but i thought i had better ask mama to email you a letter first.

take care Tok wa and please let us know how your surgery goes next week.

love and kisses

Aisya