The Health | April, 2019
30
exclusive
Make-up
against cancer
Young cancer survivors and Sephora gave new
meaning to war paint
By Reenasri Sekaran
Claudia Chan spoke about supporting the young
cancer survivors through beauty.
F
or thousands of years, cultural groups
from all over the world have participated
in ceremonial face painting for a variety of
reasons. For Native Americans, war paint
held special meaning to warriors. It was
sometimes believed that supernatural
powers were derived during the application of the
war paint that would made the warrior feel confident,
invincible, and protected.
The same concept applies to make up. We put on
our version of make up or “war paint” to feel stronger,
confident and battle our demons. We had the opportu-
nity to meet a few of the strong amazing women from
NCSM’s Young Cancer Survivors group in a skincare
and make-up workshop held by Sephora to celebrate
their Beauty ReWritten campaign.
Beauty Rewritten
Sephora’s latest campaign, Beauty ReWritten, engages
in a conversation on women empowering each other
in the name of success, defined in their own indi-
vidual ways. On 15 March, Sephora collaborated with
National Cancer Society of Malaysia (NCSM) to hold
a skin care and make up workshop.
We spoke to Claudia Chan, the Assistant Train-
ing Manager and Head of Education Department at
Sephora on this inspiring collaboration.
“Last year we worked with Women’s Aid Organisa-
tion (WAO) – where we gave them makeovers. So for
this year, we thought about doing workshops. Beauty
ReWritten was kicked off in 2019 with celebrating 8
inspiring women – with the main aim to empower
women. With International Women’s Day observed
in March, we thought it would be a great idea to col-
laborate with NCSM. I met Mei Sze, who is the Youth
Ambassador at NCSM and she proposed this idea for
Sephora to collaborate with them.”
NCSM’s Youth Ambassador:
choo Mei Sze
We then spoke to Choo Mei Sze, who is the Malaysia’s
Youth Ambassador for the National Cancer Society.
With her bubbly and vibrant personality, there was
no possible way to know that this beautiful, strong
woman was diagnosed with stage 2 rectal cancer at
the young age of 27. She recounted how her night-
mare began from a colonoscopy after a long bout of
diarrhoea.
“The specialist discouraged me from having the
colonoscopy as it was an invasive procedure, and I
was too young for it. However my father insisted,”
she explained.
When the report came back that she had a tumour
in her rectum, the news was hard to swallow. “It’s
almost impossible for me to get this type of cancer
because I don’t have any genetic history, I’m very
young, and I’m female. Usually, it happens to males
above 50 and with genetic history. So to my doctors
and surgeon and everything, it was quite a shock.”
The blogger, emcee and TV personality expressed
that she went through some low points especially
during her experience with the colostomy bag. “A
colostomy bag is when your intestines are hanging
out of your body and held in the bag, so your feces and
everything has to go through it.”
She went for surgery and had most of her rectum
and 12 centimetres of her colon removed. Later on,
did another surgery to re-join her rectum to her colon.
Fighting myths
Mei Sze currently leads NCSM’s Young Cancer Sur-
vivors group which was formed so that other young
The strong women
who won against cancer
A tale of 2 cancers
W
Elina, a 23-year old student who have battled two
different types of cancer and came out on top.
e spoke to 23-year old Elina, who is currently
a final year student at Universiti Malaya. This
23-year old is a real beacon of hope – she
battled ovarian cancer at the tender age of 12 and
thyroid cancer eight years later.
“It all began after a sports event at school – I was
having a really bad pain in my stomach. Not thinking
much, I headed to the doctor, and what they found was
a really big lump in my ovaries. At the age of 12, I was
diagnosed with early stage 3 ovarian cancer.”
After a few treatments, she received the crushing
blow – the doctors told her they were unable to do
anything and deemed her with a short lifespan. Her
parents did not give up, they headed to another doctor
who proclaimed Elina too young for chemotherapy,
and that it would put too much pressure on her fragile
I had the funniest notion to run from the hospital
in my wheelchair – it was all too much. The weekly
blood taking, injections. But the doctor told me to
be strong.”
body. Her parents then took to Universiti Malaya
where she met Dr Lim Boon Kiong.
“The first thing he said to me was we can do this!”
Elina recalls with a grin. “I had the funniest notion
to run from the hospital in my wheelchair – it was all
too much. The weekly blood taking, injections. But the
doctor told me to be strong.”
With six cycles of chemotherapy and surgery, Elina
took the whole year off school but still took her UPSR.
“Fortunately my friends were very understanding and
till date we are still best friends.”
When cancer rings twice
“It was during my first year in university. I didn’t
know if I was too stressed but my behaviour was
unpredictable and my mom saw my thyroid looked
rather alarming. I went back to Dr Lim who performed
a biopsy. The results came back as cancerous. The first
thing I remember was the look on not just my parent’s
faces but also Dr Lim’s face, it was crushing sadness,”
recalls Elina.
Diagnosed with papillary thyroid carcinoma, Elina
had to get her thyroid gland removed. At the age of 23,
Elina is on medication for the rest of her life.
“I recently went into depression and getting the
help for it. But now I have a new way of thought – I
don’t think about myself anymore, instead I think
about everyone I love.”