LOSING FATHER TO PROSTATE CANCER

Cancer is a disease that can bring a family together but when not treated in time, it can break a family’s heart Helen Margaret Singh Daughter of the late Tehran Zinay Singh

Only a family member who has lost a loved one to cancer would know how it feels to receive the heartbreaking news. For 18-year-old Helen Margaret Singh she was left traumatised when the news of her father’s demise was brought to her.

“I could not believe it, and I did not know how to respond to it,” she said.

Tehran Zinay Singh, passed away at the then Suva

Private Hospital (now the MIOT Pacific Hospitals) on May 3, 2014 after he had undergone a surgical operation for prostate cancer.

Helen said when her dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer, she had faith that all would come through for him.

The late Mr Singh was 42-years old when he died, and was a civil servant. “I had faith that everything would be alright. When dad told me he had cancer I did not lose hope, I just understood that I could not lose him,” Helen said.

She said she lost her mother when she was three-years-old after she suffered from pneumonia and lost her younger sister when she was ten years also from pneumonia.

She said her dad remarried and had three children but after the death of her mum and younger sibling she did not want to face another death in her family.

“When Ta (dad) died, I was in shock because I wasn’t expecting that to happen, I thought everything was going to be alright but it didn’t turn out the way I expected it to be.

“I broke down. I couldn’t take it. I started having flashbacks of my dad because we made so many plans on things we would do together in the family and he was the only person I needed in my life more than anyone else.”

Of the lessons she’s learnt about losing someone, especially with the Movember theme this month said: “Cancer is a disease that can bring a family together but when not treated in time, it can break a family’s heart. “All hope was gone when Ta died, but his word for me to get an education and wishing to see me on own two feet is what’s kept me going,” she said.

“No child should have to lose their parent to cancer.”