Health is Wealth.

The proverb "Health is Wealth" sounded so cliché. It is timeless but seems very overused. The first time this saying, "Health is Wealth," was used by a Harvard economist who is also an American philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson, in 1860. Similar saying in Chinese can be found a very long way back, well before 1860.

Jim Rohn, an American motivational speaker, put it this way: "Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." How true. You never know the value of health until you lose it. I have been there, and I am still there. Sickness and poor health do not differentiate or choose their target. You can be very healthy now, very rich, a marathon runner, a health enthusiast, or a doctor. But, whatever you are, you too are a target for sickness and poor health. 

Recently, I learned of an unexpected and sad case of a doctor who is a well-known prostate cancer specialist. He has been treating prostate cancer patients for 3 decades. And recently, he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer himself. He is Doctor Christopher Cheng.

An Arabian proverb sums it up pretty well: "He who has health, has hope, and he who has hope, has everything."

I know it all too well, because I was there for years and am still there. 

Sickness and poor health have robbed me of my time and money. The loss of time is the worst. The time lost includes many hospitalisations, being bedridden, seeing all kinds of specialists, physiotherapy sessions, many lab tests, all kinds of scans, laparoscopy, and languishing in pain or unconsciousness for years. Time, once lost, is gone forever, and you can never recover it. I must have squandered a significant fraction of my limited living time on poor health.

For the loss of wealth, meaning money spent, and still incurring to delay my deterioration, it must have cost me a fortune. The cost of my lifetime of daily medications includes 1.5mg of "Advagraf," 10ml of "Atovaquone oral suspension," hormone therapy medicine, and other medications. After hefty government subsidies, the drugs still cost me about a thousand a month. Not much different in cost even if I buy from JB or India.

For the many, many days spent in hospital, the cost is about S$950 per day after government subsidies. As a retired Division 1 officer, I am entitled to stay in an "A class" ward. The ward charges do not include the daily medications and frequent medical tests and operations.

Even after my discharge from the hospital, I am still saddled by my regular 1 to 2 weekly visits to the hospital to see the liver team, the kidney specialist, and the endocrinologist, plus my regular blood and urine tests and an assortment of very sophisticated tests. All these cost a lot of money. But money spent and to continue to be spent is the least of my concern. Because money can be earned back. Time lost cannot be recovered at all.

So, take some time to reflect and meditate on the phrase "Health is Wealth," and feel the truth, reality, and gravity of the 3 simple words.