NORRATOR – NORRA + narrator
Stories shaped by experience
The Two Minds
The first time Tijani was diagnosed with cancer, it was complicated.
It wasn’t the kind of diagnosis you see in TV shows or movies, where someone gets one scan and suddenly everyone knows exactly what is wrong.
In real life, it takes time.
And a few steps.
We rushed to the emergency ward because Tijani had sudden pain, she was pale and cold to the touch.
If it had been just the pain, I probably wouldn’t have gone to the hospital that day.
I had work lined up.
We had training scheduled.
We had just rehearsed the deck the night before.
I had left employment six years earlier and was running my own corporate training business. At that time, it was literally:
No work, no money.
So yes, I was calculating.
I was calculating work.
Money.
The situation.
And apparently, cancer.
At the hospital, I watched three doctors examine her. I could see their facial expressions change into something I couldn’t quite read.
You can tell when doctors have found something, even when they don’t know what it is yet.
In their words:
“There is something in her stomach but we know it’s not a pregnancy because it is not the right place.”
Well, that certainly narrowed things down.
They did an ultrasound.
Couldn’t pinpoint it.
Then a CT scan.
Still no.
Then, an MRI.
Still no exact location.
But they knew there was a mass.
Since the scans couldn’t reveal exactly where the mass was, Tijani went through an endoscopy.
Nothing.
Then a colonoscopy.
Technically nothing, except they could see something protruding from inside the colon.
“Growth” was the choice word.
Fair enough.
No biopsy, can’t call it a tumour.
But to me, something that big had to be cancer.
Looking back, I appreciate the realist in me.
Anything less would probably not have carried me through what came next.
The growth had to be removed, regardless of whether it was malignant or not. We were given an estimate for the operation, only to discover that our insurance wouldn’t cover the full cost.
We were given two hospitals with hepatobiliary specialists to choose from.
We chose the one closest to home.
The operation was scheduled for 2 weeks time, and the cost was manageable.
Then one week later, the hospital called and said the date wasn’t available. The reason? It was given away to another patient. Just like that.
I felt invisible and insignificant. Life is cruel. But who has time for that?
They said the next date available was another month. Otherwise, I’d have to rent the operation theatre at my own cost. It would cost 3 times more.
I remember when I was diagnosed with cancer – after bawling my eyes out at the doctor’s office, my immediate thought was “Get it out of me! Get it out of me!”
So I thought, wouldn’t a 20-year old feel more fear than that? So I booked for the operation theatre out-of-pocket.
During the operation, they found not one growth, but two.
The first was huge.
16cm by 14cm.
To give you a mental picture, that’s about the size of a big grapefruit.
Or a small pomelo.
You pick the image that suits you.
Mine was pomelo.
The second one was small.
Compared to the first one.
4cm by 4cm by 4cm.
Limau nipis size.
Kecik je.
Nothing like a little dry humour to ease the tension.
Almost half of her liver was removed. We were told that the liver regenerates itself.
A fun fact I wish I had learned through any other means.
The operation was supposed to take four hours.
It took six and a half.
Those extra two and a half hours were torture, and cost more.
As a parent, there is a very strange balancing act between having enough strength to face what is happening, hoping everything turns out fine, and preparing yourself for the possibility that it won’t.
I’m very much a “have a Plan B” person.
When I was told I had cancer, I had been mentally unprepared.
Looking back, that was one of the worst things I had done to myself.
I wasn’t going to make that mistake with my daughter.
I wanted to be strong for her.
But somewhere in those extra hours of waiting, I remember thinking:
She’s just 20. Am I going to see her reach her 21st birthday?
I wasn’t just calculating hospital costs, I was counting her age, and wondering how many more she would have.
In the span of three weeks, we had dealt with an emergency health situation, rescheduled work, scheduled an operation and figured out how to be financially capable of handling whatever came next.
Basically, life had decided to throw the whole syllabus at us at once.
And then we thought the operation was the end of it.
The big thing had been removed.
Now we just needed to get Tijani home, let her rest and allow her wounds to heal.
Except the battle wasn’t over.
One month after the operation, the @#$%&* cancer came back.
We hadn’t even had time to process everything that had already happened.
But the doctor told us that Tijani’s cancer could still be treated.
That was a bittersweet relief.
Bitter because we thought we were finally moving into healing and getting back to normal.
Sweet because there was something we could do.
Initially, we were told that we could choose between radiotherapy and chemotherapy. We did our research and felt that radiotherapy was the gentler option — easier to manage in terms of time, effort, cost, and the effect on her.
After discussions between the doctors and the committee, we were told that because of the nature and location of the cancer, chemotherapy was the only viable alternative.
The only choice wasn’t really a choice. When we thought we had a choice, we didn’t select chemotherapy because it costs more money, time, and effort. But something is better than nothing.
At this point, I was very objective.
There was a problem.
They were experts.
The experts knew how to solve the problem.
So we followed the plan.
In between, Tijani reached 21. Alhamdulillah. Not much of a celebration, but life in itself is one, right?
What followed was a year of CT scans, MRI and TACE — transarterial chemoembolization.
In simple terms, it was a targeted treatment that involved injecting chemotherapy and then blocking the blood supply to the cancer cells.
Drug it and block it so it dies.
Simple enough.
Her chemotherapy wasn’t the stereotypical ‘sit in a chair and get an infusion’ situation. She had to lie on a table in a cold room while technicians used X-ray guidance to insert a microcatheter and inject contrast fluid before administering the chemotherapy drug.
There were scans before, during, and after the treatments.
I honestly can’t remember which ones were preparation and which ones were follow-up anymore.
All I knew was that it took time, effort and money.
But more importantly, it was something we could do.
And that mattered.
At that time, I was living through it.
Surviving through it.
But my mindset was different.
We were fighting it.
If there was anything I was good at, it was fighting back.
As a young girl, I was called bold.
After my dad died when I was 15, I was determined to become an independent woman who knew how to make money and manage it herself.
I didn’t understand then that my mother wasn’t simply a ‘crying housewife’.
She had lost her life partner.
She had lost her tempat bergantung.
I was an idiot.
I’m so sorry, Mak. 
But that was the younger me.
So when cancer came back a month after Tijani’s operation, I was a bad ass – at least I thought I was one.
By that time, I had lost Mak years ago, survived a bad marriage, had a divorce, and faced cancer. I was also living with lymphedema.
This?
My attitude was ‘Not today, demon’. We were fighting back.
Wowww.
Current-day Norra misses that fire.
But she appreciates the wisdom that came after it.
Because behind all that fire, it was difficult.
Seeing Tijani become weak after every treatment was heartbreaking. She would be down for almost two weeks, then bounce back for a while before the next treatment came around.
Then her hair started falling out.
I could only reassure her that it was temporary. Once she got better, her hair would grow back.
Any woman understands the relationship with our crowning glory.
I get upset when I see too many strands of my own hair on the drain cover after a shampoo, even though I know it’s completely normal.
There was Tijani, all 21 years of her life, had dealt with a sudden health crisis, a major operation and now falling hair.
As her mother, I was upset too.
She had started outgrowing her pimples.
Her skin was clearing.
She was ‘glowing up’, as kids called it those days.
There is a particular kind of happiness and motherly pride in watching your daughter become a young woman.
And then there was cancer.
And chemotherapy that made her feel sick and look unwell.
The only thing I could do was put on a tough front and reassure her — not just through words, but through action — that I was there.
Right beside her.
Everything she was going through, I was going through too.
After a year of treatment, the doctor told us her cancer was in remission.
We both felt triumphant.
It had been a year-long battle of physical challenges, emotional strength and mental endurance.
An unplanned triathlon we had been thrown into without any time to prepare.
And somehow, we came out the other side still breathing.
We were happy.
We were relieved.
I even made a post about our victory.
We took a photo together, both wearing our matching spectacles and smiling at the camera.
I didn’t know it then.
It was a remission illusion.
About six months later, life was living again.
Tijani had started working with an eSports team, doing social media. It was her first ‘big girl’ job.
Before that, she had taken over from her brother as my training assistant. Since training wasn’t happening all the time, she had found another job in between sessions so she could contribute to the household.
She even made it to her 22nd birthday.
22. We had made it. I remember the day I was thinking if she would make it to 21. She did, and she even made it to 22.
Life was living again. I was a grateful mother.
I was also a business owner who needed business to move again.
Getting back to normal mattered for many reasons. I had spent a lot of money on her treatments and doctor visits. I needed to recover financially.
And she needed to live.
There was so much life, so many experiences and so many achievements ahead of her.
Then she told us that her body didn’t feel right.
We made an appointment with a gynaecologist.
As these appointments usually go, the doctor did an ultrasound.
I watched her face – something was wrong.
She called another doctor for a second opinion.
The second doctor’s facial expression wasn’t good either.
At that point, I thought it was some kind of “womanly issue”.
I asked the doctor to be straight with me – “Tell me what you suspect”, I said.
She said maybe ovarian cancer.
We needed a CT scan, but the earliest appointment was a month away.
That was too long. Time was of the essence. This thing is growing.
So we went through the private wing instead.
It cost three times more, but waiting wasn’t an option.
While we waited for the CT results, another specialist suggested a biopsy from the fluids in her stomach.
That was very smart. So we went in for another appointment to tap the fluid from her stomach.
And then we waited for the next appointment to find out what was happening.
There was no medication because there was no diagnosis yet.
In retrospect, I think the manipulation from the ultrasound had somehow aggravated the cancer cells because her bloating started afterwards.
I don’t know if that was actually the case.
What I do know is that the bloating became painful.
Sudden, sharp pains in her stomach.
Eventually, the pain became unbearable.
We went to the emergency department.
In a span of a few weeks, Tijani looked like she was five months pregnant.
We could tell she had fluids in her stomach, but we didn’t know why.
We wanted the fluids drained.
Instead, after two days, we were discharged with morphine syrup and no draining.
I was so distressed seeing her in pain that I didn’t even think to ask about the CT scan or biopsy findings.
So we went home.
I think both of us had a tiny bit of denial.
Maybe her stomach would settle.
Maybe everything would somehow go away.
Four days later, the pain was worse.
So we went back to the emergency department.
This time, we were there for more than 24 hours before she was assigned a ward.
Looking back, I think I understand why the hospital took so long to assign us to a bed. I think they had to figure out where to send her.
She had liver cancer and it got removed. She’s back with a bloated stomach.
Was it the cancer or was it something else?
Was it the same cancer or a different cancer?
If it was cancer, who takes care of her? Hepatobiliary or Oncology? Maybe Gynaecology, we came from there.
Somewhere in that span of 24 hours, one of the doctors asked to speak to me privately.
She told me Tijani’s cancer was back. It had spread. It was Stage 4.
She didn’t ask me to sit down first, like they do in TV shows.
It was the emergency department. There were no chairs.
My swollen, achy legs held me up like tree trunks.
I was not mentally prepared for this.
Not for the cancer to come back.
Not for it to be this aggressive.
Not for Stage 4.
The only thing I remember thinking was:
Huh?
I didn’t really have time to process it.
We had already spent a full day in the emergency department. I was exhausted. My legs were aching. The emergency department was full of people, movement and noise.
And then there was this woman in the bed next to Tijani.
While Tijani waddled to the restroom, the woman asked me what I was there for.
I told her I was accompanying my daughter because of stomach pain and that I had just been told her cancer had relapsed.
She was sympathetic.
Then she asked me something I found very strange.
Was I going to tell my daughter?
I remember thinking:
What do you mean, am I going to tell her?
What was I supposed to say when we had to go for more appointments and treatments?
What was Tijani supposed to think when she knew something was happening in her body?
The woman told me:
“Please don’t tell her. Let her live a happy life.”
It was absolutely mind-boggling to me.
How are we supposed to fix a problem if we don’t know we have one?
How is anybody supposed to advocate for change if they don’t know change is needed?
I was trying to figure out how to tell my daughter that the cancer had returned.
It turned out I didn’t have to.
Tijani already knew.
She had been watching the doctors too.
She understood their behaviour.
I am not exaggerating when I say that Tijani was mature beyond her years.
The news was a huge shock.
We had come to the hospital because of the pain caused by the fluid in her abdomen.
We had just won a battle we had been fighting for a year.
After a short reprieve, the cancer had come back like a horrible ex who refused to leave.
Or a pimple that just wouldn’t die.
Honestly, cancer was becoming the most persistent thing in our lives.
But I was still me, I was still a bad ass. I loved my daughter.
And somewhere inside me, the same instinct kicked in:
We can fight the cancer again.
We did it before.
We can do it again.
Eventually, Tijani was wheeled into a ward.
And the ward was different.
Quiet.
Pleasant.
Peaceful.
It was the palliative care unit.
That was when we started understanding what was happening with her swollen stomach.
There was fluid building up in her abdomen.
We wanted it drained because it was causing her pain.
At that point, we still didn’t really understand what the fluid was or why it kept coming back.
It would be days before we understood what ascites was.
For the moment, we were simply relieved to be somewhere quieter, somewhere where people were looking after her.
One of the doctors arranged for Tijani to have a procedure called bedside tapping.
The fluid was drained. The bloating went down. The pain went away.
We were relieved. Maybe things were going to get better.
Then, within a day, the fluid came back.
Another tapping. Another accumulation.
And slowly, the relief of finally being in a ward began to chip away.
In its place was another mystery.
Another uncertainty.
Another challenge.
Our plan was simple: get the fluid out.
Then figure out how to fight the cancer again.
But life wasn’t about to smooth itself out.
We were fools for thinking we could just keep repeating the draining process while getting her onto another treatment plan.
During the two weeks we spent in the palliative ward, we finally understood that the cancer had spread aggressively to her abdomen.
The cancer was causing her body to produce fluids to protect her organs.
But I still thought we could fight.
Because fighting was what I knew.
And it wasn’t a different cancer. It was a cancer we knew, we fought it before and we won.
I wasn’t just fighting for my daughter, she was my companion.
She understood me so well. She understood the struggles I had gone through raising her and her brother as a single parent.
She listened to me yap just to make me happy.
She accompanied me places.
She massaged my lymphedema legs.
She did facials for me, she coloured my hair, she fixed my lashes.
She came up with ideas for our training sessions.
She was beautiful, creative and practical.
I had plans for her – health supplements, get her stronger.
Get her through this.
Find a way forward, there had to be a way forward.
We asked the doctor about treatment.
We were told that Tijani’s liver and kidney readings needed to reach a certain level for her body to be able to flush out the toxins from the treatment.
Every few days, we asked.
Every few days, I waited for the answer to change.
After two weeks, the readings still weren’t where they needed to be.
Treatment was technically an option.
Legally, we would have to sign an indemnity form.
I understood what the doctor was really telling me.
She wasn’t just saying my daughter could not be treated.
She was saying my daughter could not be saved.
And for the first time in my life, I did not know what to do.
Fighting and struggling had always been a part of my life.
When you’re fighting for something, the end point is clear.
There is something to work towards, there is something you can do.
But when the end point is the end… it doesn’t add up.
And for the first time in my life, I did not know what to do.
That was the second mind.
The first time, I had known what to do.
Find the problem.
Find the experts.
Follow the treatment.
Fight.
The second time, I thought I had the same answer.
But somewhere between “We can fight again” and being told that her body could no longer handle the treatment, I realised I had been using the same answer for a question that had changed.
And there are some things you cannot fight your way out of.
Sometimes, the hardest thing isn’t fighting.
It is learning what to do when there is nothing left to fight.
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