Blogs of Note - Yvonne Foong

I want to take some time in promoting a site in which you can actually help out a person in need. She is Yvonne Foong, a very intelligent and hardworking person. Unfortunately, she has been combatting health difficulties in recent years as she faces a rare sickness making losing her eyesight currently. Tumours growth makes her living difficult and hard to determine which day she might have to drop down. Below is an excerpt of her conditions:

When she was only 16, doctors diagnosed her with a rare genetic disorder called Neurofibromatosis Type 2. Curious schoolteachers and friends could only observe, as the former ballet dancer, figure skater, karate fighter and Soprano in the school choir suffered sudden health deteriorations that robbed her bodily capabilities.

In her thirteenth year when the first symptoms arise, Yvonne became deaf in the right ear, and soon had difficulty balancing. The unexpected turn of events were strange and unbelievable. In the next three years, Yvonne suffered in silence, swallowing the ill-fate in a gulp and roughed through tough times alone, when no one paid serious attention to her pleas for medical attention.

To date, Yvonne has undergone 1 spine and 3 brain surgeries. The first two were done at Kuala Lumpur General Hospital where she suffered the consequences of reckless and ill-informed doctors. Besides that, the lack of experience among local doctors proved unhelpful in treating tumours caused by Neurofibromatosis Type 2.

As such, Yvonne is determined to seek medical treatment abroad. Her life took another twist upon meeting a kind Neurotologist named Dr. Rick A. Friedman, who did her third surgery for free. The opportunity broadened Yvonne’s perspective towards the world of medicine, and her life became hopeful once again.

The fourth surgery, which was to remove another brain tumour that robbed her residual hearing in 2005, was successfully done by Dr. Friedman in Los Angeles. For this surgery, Yvonne together with her friends and kind members of the public raised the cost by selling t-shirts and accessories, and by organising various fundraising events. The first 10 months of selling, giving speeches, appearing in newspapers and magazines, and dealing with stress was not easy, but for a better quality of life, the effort was definitely worthwhile.

Please help spread the word for her if you can. For readers in China, and if your family members can help her in anything, please do so. Her medical bills are very expensive and hard to upkeep. Every few months, she need to source out 5000-6000 Malaysian ringgit in order to do any surgery. You can help her by reading up on her. She does some fund raising on her own to pay for her own bills. You can buy off the things she auctioned off online. Read up her blog to find out how you can do it. Her recent corsett from Russia really looks wonderful!