For more than 30 years, our 52-year-old patient Kelly Sun opened the shutters of her family’s umbrella stall at Chinatown Complex daily, working alongside her mother. Her family of four, including Kelly’s father and older brother, stayed together at the HDB unit upstairs.
Today, the shutters are mostly closed.
Kelly lost her father to cancer in her teens. Her mother has been diagnosed with a brain tumour and is uncommunicative and bedbound in a nursing home. In August this year, Kelly also lost her older brother who suffered from hereditary muscular dystrophy.
Like her brother, Kelly lives with hereditary muscular dystrophy which has gradually taken away her mobility. A lung condition also leaves her struggling to breathe, and she now depends on a wheelchair and oxygen concentrator and needs help with most daily activities. Her only family member at home now is her elderly aunt, who also has mobility challenges. Unable to work, Kelly relies largely on her aunt’s savings to get by.
Kelly misses her family very much. She said, “I am very close to my brother. I feel all alone after he passed on. I still try to visit my mother, but she does not seem to recognise me anymore.”
In July this year, Kelly came under the care of Assisi Hospice Home Care team. Our doctors, nurses, and physiotherapist visit her regularly to help manage her symptoms and maintain her mobility as much as possible. To ease her financial burden, we provide ambulance transfers for her medical appointments. Our medical social worker offers a listening ear and is supporting her through her grief and loss; we also provided her with a portable oxygen concentrator. With that, she can still do her groceries, attend church and, when she feels able, open her umbrella stall for a few hours a few days a week.
She said, “The Assisi staff are very cheerful and make me laugh when they visit. I still have my tears, but I smile after that and keep going.”
This Christmas, enable us to help patients like Kelly continue to live with dignity and courage, knowing that they do not have to face the final journey alone.
