Mouth Cancer Symposium

Hello folks,

Something exciting for me came up 2 weeks ago when I received an email from Dr Vinod of the Mouth Cancer Foundation, UK. He invited me to share my cancer experience in a Mouth Cancer Symposium in Kuala Lumpur which would be attended by dentists and oral cancer researchers. After giving it a lot of thought, I agreed to do it for a number of reasons:

1. The lacking of awareness on the importance of patient support among the medical fraternity.

2. The lacking of awareness on the importance of informing the patients on the consequence of late diagnosis among dentists.

3. The importance of convincing the oral cancer patients to face this disease head on.

4. My personal selfish reason: to boost my confidence in speaking in front of an audience and make myself understood..

I spoke for about 25 minutes..and was stunned by the undivided attention I got from the audience. I thought I sounded horrible but I went on anyway...no turning back.

I only knew that I was understood when they clapped after I said that "this is the first time I have the courage to speak in front of a large audience after I lost my tongue". And that was a good feeling......

So long.....

Sharifah