Compiled by C.ARUNO, OON JUN-YANG and R. ARAVINTHAN
A JOHOR Baru woman, Nur Ezzaidah Mohd Dzulkarni, is facing the gruelling challenge of caring for two young children with severe illnesses.
According to Harian Metro, her six-year-old daughter, Aulia Izzatunnisa, suffers from a rare condition called Apert Syndrome, while her three-year-old son, Muhammad Ayyish Irfan, has been diagnosed with brain cancer.
Despite the hardship, she remains grateful for the unwavering support of her husband and family.
The couple is currently doing their best to manage their children’s complex medical needs.
Aulia Izzatunnisa, who is enrolled in a pre-Special Education Integration Programme class, also suffers from obstructive sleep apnoea and requires a breathing aid while sleeping.
Doctors have advised facial surgery for her, costing approximately RM70,000, but the procedure has been postponed due to financial constraints.
Muhammad Ayyish Irfan has already undergone surgery to remove a head tumour, but doctors could not remove it completely because it would affect his nerves, Nur Ezzaidah explained.
“That is why Ayyish needs to undergo chemotherapy, and I hope everything goes smoothly,” she said.
> A woman of Malay-Chinese parentage, raised in Switzerland, has mastered several languages, Utusan Malaysia reported.
Nursaidah Salim, 27, the daughter of a Chinese mother and a Malay father, grew up in an environment rich in cultural diversity.
She noted that since her school days, she has been surrounded by friends from various countries, an atmosphere that unconsciously nurtured her passion for foreign languages and cultures.
While English was her first introduction to language, Swiss German truly shaped her.
Today, she is also fluent in Standard German, French, Italian and Mandarin.
Although her move to Malaysia as a teenager was tinged with sadness over leaving friends behind, her multilingualism has since become a significant asset in her social life and career as a language tutor.
“I love it when people feel ‘at home’ when I speak in their language,” she said.
(The above articles are compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.)
