Our Feisty Princess - Charmaine Lim 14 July 2005 - 21 Oct 2011

I'm not sure how many people still remember Charmaine Lim. Her story was featured on The Newpaper sometime in 2009.

Her name is Charmaine, the feisty little girl who was diagnosed with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma - a malignant tumor that develops from nerve tissue - when she was only 4 years old. Her mom, Cynthia, refused to give up despite being told that she had only 10% chance at recovery and she refuses to let Charmaine stick to the conventional treatment of chemotherapy which would mean that Charmaine will have to be confined in her home. She wanted Charmaine to have a normal childhood just like any other kid. She seeked the latest medical breakthrough, the latest treatment for Charmaine which brought them to the States.

I read about Charmaine when I was still pregnant with Larissa, before I became a mom. At that point of time, I simply did not understand what Cynthia was doing. To me then, I did not understand why she was doing what she did Charmaine was just one of the millions of children who suffered from the illness and she is lucky that there are so many people who cared about her, enough to start a blog for her and raise funds for her treatments.

It was only recently that I started reading the blog again. As I read through Cynthia's blog posts, I could feel her pain, the pain of a mother whose child is suffering. I teared when reading her blog and as I looked at Larissa who is so innocent and so beautiful to me, I really felt the immense pain that Cynthia must have gone through. No mom would wanna see her baby, the tiny one we carried in our arms have to go through such pain. If this had happened to Larissa, I would pray every single day that god let me take her place, let me be the one to suffer.I finally understood why Cynthia did all that. A mom should never take no for an answer. Even when the doctors at KKH were very grim, Cynthia managed to find one doctor who agreed to treat Charmaine and helped her seek the help of doctors in the US. 

Sadly, Charmaine left her mom in the wee hours on 21st Oct 2011. After 3 years of a long hard battle with the cancer, it spread all over and as her mom described, you can literally see the tumors popping up all over and they left her with wounds that bled so much. She has left this world for a better place, one which she can be happy and free from suffering....