babababa pepsi

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So yesterady I was watching the early 2000s film Funeral March. It’s a story about a girl diagnosed with cancer (played by Charlene Choi), apparently the cancer is treatable but she’s given up hope. In the film she goes to this funeral director (Eason Chan) and requests he help her plan her funeral. He does but throughout the time spent together he inspires her and reignites her will to fight the disease, and to live.

These type of terminal illness films are a dime a dozen, but this one works because of the strong chemistry and the solid, not-too-pretentious script. This is also the film that proved Eason and Ah Sa could act (she had only done small bit roles before this and Eason was annoying as hell in his previous couple of films).

Anyway, I had seen this before and liked it. It was on TVB last night and I watched bits of it before falling asleep. Today at work I’m randomly wikipediaing it (I do this all the time for fun, it’s part of the reason I have this insane encyclopaedia knowledge of things such as sports and movies) and as I was reading the page my editor calls me over and assigns me a story—pet cancer.

So I call this woman who’ve had two pets succumb to cancer. Or at least that’s what I was told. Turns out the first dog, Pepsi, was diagnosed with cancer in 96 and given 3-6 months to live. Only the woman didn’t give up and sought treatment. Pepsi became the first dog in the city to receive chemotherapy treatment—a process that included shots and medication. Eventually, after two and half years of painful treatments, Pepsi beat the disease and lived until the age of 13.

This woman spent god knows how much money on the treatments (each shot was a grand and each dose of medication was 400, there was also a 200 dollar consulting fee. pepsi needed visits once a week every week for two and half years…) and even today, two years after Pepsi has moved on, she tears up when telling me details of the treatment.

I must say, the room in SCMP office, especially around my desk, got mighty dusty too (stolen from Bill Simmons).