Cancer Article in Round Table Magazine

This Article appeared in the Million Dollar Round Table Magazine March/April 2007

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'Planning to spend a couple of months at home after a simple surgical procedure, Brenda Christobelle Mohammed had no idea that she would spend the next several months treating a cancerous tumour.
Brenda, a four-year MDRT member from Trinidad postponed a doctor recommended surgical procedure to late summer 2005 to allow her to attend the 2005 MDRT Annual Meeting as planned for June in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The day after the surgery, Brenda’s doctor told her news she did not expect.
The procedure had been interrupted because of what the doctor found, and she was awaiting lab results.
A few days later, Brenda was discharged and instructed to retrieve the results, then bring them to the doctor to open.
But, Brenda was too anxious to wait. “I ripped open the envelope and was stunned to see the comments,” she said. “I had a malignant tumour.”
The doctor had more bad news.
The cancer cells were the type that could rapidly spread and required immediate treatment abroad.
Brenda obtained the name of a well- referred oncologist and flew to the United States to see him.
”He was calm and very reassuring, explaining that he could not perform another operation so soon after the first,” she said.
The oncologist recommended that she do three sessions of chemotherapy to stop the cancer from spreading before another surgery could be done to remove the tumour.
When the whirlwind of the cancer diagnosis began to die down, new fear about the cost of treatment crept up on her.
She was forced to stay in the United States for several months to receive treatment.
Though she was able to stay with her daughter in Florida, the treatments were expensive at US$16,000.00 per session.
Before she left Trinidad, she thought ahead and submitted claims for her two critical illness policies, worth US$65,000.00.
Group medical insurance was provided by her employers, but she had to pay upfront and submit the claims afterward.
“When the doctor’s assistant called with the cost of the chemotherapy, it was very high, but luckily I had critical illness insurance and the peace of mind that I had the funds,” she said.
With the second surgery, the doctor successfully removed the tumour, and the chemotherapy treatments had stopped any spreading.
As a precaution, she continued chemotherapy for three months, first returning to Trinidad to celebrate Christmas with her family.
Between the chemotherapy treatments, both before and after surgery, and the surgical and hospital fees, her bout with cancer cost US$123,000.00. Her health insurance combined with critical illness insurance payouts covered $113,000.00, leaving her savings to bear the rest of the burden.
“Without those insurances, my savings and those of my husband would have been depleted completely, and we may even have had to borrow some,” she said.
This experience has made me more determined to tell everyone about the value of insurance.
Without it, I would not have been in a position to afford overseas treatment, and be here to tell my story.”

Read Brenda's Memoir, I am Cancer Free available at Amazon Universal Link
The Book received the Mc Grath's House Award for Best Non=Fiction in 2016.
It also received a five-star review and seal from Readers Favorite in 2017.
Look out for the new Book Cover coming soon.

When one door closes, Another opens.

Retirement is Fun has a new Book Cover.
This book will dispel your fears of Retirement.

Book Description:
When one door closes, another opens.
In her book Retirement is Fun - A New Chapter, which is a sequel to her memoir My Life as a Banker - A Life Worth Living, Brenda describes her many wonderful experiences at the end of her banking career.
Her new job brought many opportunities to travel the world, have fun, and enjoy life.
She grasped opportunities as they fell in her path
Is your life over when you retire?
Brenda dispels that fear.
She proves that retirement is a time to enjoy life and earn too.
Despite facing many challenges such as cancer, deaths of loved ones, and an accident, which made her realize that life is very short, she triumphantly moves on to accomplish more.
Brenda increased her skills in areas she never thought possible.
Brenda has surely proven that when she retired from her first job she definitely did not retire from life.
For her, Retirement is indeed fun and she has written about her fun experiences in this personal memoir on Retirement.
Retirement is Fun: A new Chapter was a nominee in the Metamorph's Publishing Summer Indie Book Awards 2016 in the category Bio/Memoirs.
This is a book you would want to read.
Get it at Amazon.

Do not let the word Retirement fool you. Read this Book.

When one door closes another opens.
Travel the world, have fun, enjoy life, and grasp opportunities as they fall in your path.
In her book Retirement is Fun - A New Chapter, which is a sequel to her autobiography My Life as a Banker - A Life Worth Living, Brenda describes her many wonderful experiences at the end of her banking career.
Is your life over when you retire?
Brenda dispels that fear.
She proves that retirement is a time to enjoy life.
Despite facing many challenges such as cancer, deaths of loved ones, and an accident, which made her realize that life is very short, she triumphantly moves on to accomplish more.
After her banking career, she landed a new job in an Insurance company and had numerous travel opportunities.
She increased her skills in areas she never thought possible.
Brenda has surely proven that when she retired from her first job she definitely did not retire from life.
For her, Retirement is indeed fun and she has written about her fun experiences in this personal memoir on Retirement.
Retirement is Fun: A new Chapter was a nominee in the Metamorph's Publishing Summer Indie Book Awards 2016 in the category Bio/Memoirs.


The book has a new Cover.
This is a book you would want to read.
Get it in Kindle or Paperback at Amazon

Here is an extract from the Book:

'On Monday, the opening day of the Million Dollar Round Table Conference in Anaheim, California, many celebrities thrilled us with their messages.
One such celebrity was Queen Noor of Jordan, who spoke of the need for dialogue in all aspects of life. Her topic was The Power of Dialogue.
Another speaker was Loung Ung, a most dynamic speaker. Her topic was, Given a Chance, which tied back to her Memoir, First, they killed my Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
Her book chronicles the brutality of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, from the author’s forced ”evacuation” of Phnom Penh in 1975 to her family’s subsequent movements from town to town and eventual separation.
Her story was most touching and there was not a dry eye in the hundreds of Financial Advisors present.
I have in my possession a copy of the MDRT’s 2004 proceedings.
At the end of her presentation, she left us with these words:

“When you return to your businesses, I hope you will think of my story and seek out someone in your community who needs to be given a chance to succeed. When you hear about a child left behind from a school trip due to poverty, please consider what your help can mean to that child. When a family from another culture joins your community, know that the friendship you share means a chance to learn, to laugh, and to succeed in a new world. When you leave this room, I challenge you to extend yourself beyond your comfort zone. Appreciate the value of a kind word. Sometimes the little things mean so much. You have the opportunity to change the world. You must start at home. Invest in people. For me, a painful road was filled with kindness; kindness recognized much later but now seen for what it was, the chance to go beyond surviving to thriving. I am so grateful.”

Thousands of members from across the world attended the Conference, which lasted until Wednesday of that week.
In his opening speech, the President of the MDRT said that we, the MDRT Members, were among the top 1% in the Insurance Industry in the world.
It felt good to be among the best.
‘Wow’ was the theme of the Conference, which provided us with motivational and educational experiences that kept thousands of members from seventy-one countries around the world, going back each year.
The programs were rich with the experience and knowledge of speakers, and their life-altering stories on the Main Platform, which sent us back home with renewed and invigorated spirits.
Of course, we took time off to sightsee as well.
After the Conference ended, we took tour buses to Universal Studios, Disneyland, and the Hollywood Boulevard.

My Life as a Banker: A Life Worth Living.

Fascinating, Intriguing, Inspiring, Positive, Heartwarming, and Motivational Memoir.
My Life as a Banker - A Life Worth Living is a memoir, in which the writer describes changes in the banking system and changes in the bank's attitude to its employees throughout her working years.
Brenda proved that hard work and determination pay, as she moved up the ranks, and received several promotions, leading up to senior managerial status.
Personal details of her life are highlighted in this memoir.
Read about Brenda's first mega trip abroad to New York, Canada, London, Germany, and Holland, as well as other fabulous vacations she enjoyed.
How and where she met her husband and other wonderful family memories will interest readers.
Life is not always perfect and there were sad moments that will tug at your heart.
My Life as a Banker: A Life Worth Living was voted second in Bio/Memoirs in Metamorph's Publishing Summer Indie Book Awards 2016.
Get the book at Amazon Universal Link.

Travel Memoirs - My first trip abroad was unforgettable

My first trip abroad was unforgettable.
I had long leave of 3 months from the bank where I worked after seven years of employment.
Another co-worker and I teamed up and went to New York, Canada, London, Germany, and Holland.
The initial intention was to visit my sister and her family in Germany, but we got a great bargain to visit those other countries on our way to Germany.
My sister's husband was a Sergeant in the Royal Air Force which was stationed in Wildenrath, Germany at the time.

That memorable trip is part of my memoirs in two books - "My Life as a Banker: A life Worth Living,"

and "Travel Memoirs with Pictures: Exploring the World," which is a pictorial book of precious memories.


I also wrote a poem and the first two verses begin with that trip.
Listen to the narration in the video above.
Books are available at Amazon Universal Link

Five-Star Books by Amazing Authors

These are amazing Books written by Awesome Authors and which I have read.
I have read more than one book by some of these authors, but I can only highlight one in this slideshow.
I recommend these books highly.

Author Spotlight with Dorothy Day

I had an interesting interview with Dorothy Day, a family therapist and retired teacher.
She is the author of the book, Memories of the Sharecropper's Family: Includes an Ainsworth History.

Tell us about yourself.

I am almost 68 years old, and getting introspective or just wanting to make sure my grandchildren and future generations know I occupied a place and made a small difference.
I devoted over 25 years to teaching marvelous students the joys of language and then now 22 years as a marriage and family therapist, some years overlapping.
My husband Charles and I, and our Bitza (term for mixed parentage dog, coined by Clare McIntosh) Lady live a pretty quiet life in rural Mississippi in the sunny and humid South (USA).
I was chaired as a result of a late onset muscular dystrophy, searched for a new purpose as I rolled through life, and have finally settled on writing.
I have been creative, imaginative, loving language for years, but a slow typist.
Several years ago I threw out the clutter of a couple of feet high notebooks and journals I had amassed over the years.
No regrets.
I am a different person now.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Like most of us, I assume, there was that little germ within that kept telling me I could write.
If I didn’t have so many papers to grade, preparations to make, people to entertain—so much busyness and so many excuses!
I wrote during the first ten minutes of class with my students.
I wrote according to prompts from a writing group.
But I did not become author/writer until I quit playing and started writing.
I was hesitant to say that I am a writer, but I am a teller of stories.

What inspired you to become a writer?

Death—the death of a career, the death of independence by new inability to drive, the death of a beloved older brother who had kept the family stories alive through his tales.
For Joe and Mike and Bill and Gene, I started retelling the stories as best as I knew them.
I interviewed siblings to get their memories of our family and our struggles and our celebrations, and our successes in leaving poverty far behind us.
I wanted others to know the richness of our lives.

Do you have a specific writing style?

My writing style is the folksy, storytelling style.

What books have most influenced your life

Books that have influenced me— To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my all-time favorites; Atticus Finch is the fantasy father I wanted.
There have been so many authors that I have loved.
I have read eclectically—literary fiction, thrillers, mysteries, nonfiction, Shakespeare, Milton, Donne, Thomas Grey.
We had few reading materials when I was young, and I read the Bible, Readers’ Digest, and the daily news.

Are your writings based on someone you know, or events in your own life?

If someone reads my memoir/family history and gets to chapter 13, she or he will discover the family Bluebeard murderer that I am writing about in my novel A Taste for Death. So I take real events and flesh them into something new. I am discovering how difficult it is to keep so much information on track. I am thankful that I was reared by a sharecropper so I can depict those Depression-era times of Mississippi farmers who wanted more and was willing to sacrifice to get more.
Unfortunately, his desire led to his willingness to sacrifice family members.
Yet, I am not a dark and foreboding person, so hopefully, there will be a redemptive message.


Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?

I reach out for information to other authors and delight in making connections with them. Janet Taylor-Perry has answered so many of my questions about self-publishing and has pushed me toward promotion and marketing; Charlie Spillers needs to belong to this group; his account of years as secret agent in Mississippi and Louisiana are thriller-worthy memoir—he tells a story of two women whose story I want to purloin; he also answers my questions.
Phyllis F. McManus tells a good story, is encouraging, and we have talked on the phone several states apart.
I have found out with my dependencies as the youngest in a family of eight that writers share eagerly.
We all want our voices to be heard.
My college English teacher, Edna Earle Crews, has mentored many writers and has helped me ever since I left her class fifty years ago; she is a poet.
Holly Lisle’s, Janice Hardy’s, Lakin’s websites, thenextbigwriter.com, my college roommates have also influenced me.
Cassie Select is the author I sought to impress, and she said very nice things about my WIP.
Ian Sutherland has also been kind to answer questions, as well as Wesley Banks.


What book are you reading now?

I have finished Paz Ellis’s book and will soon post a review.
I have waiting for me when I get a certain amount of work done Greg Iles’s new book.
It is purchased, signed, and is a great motivator to catch up to my writing plan.

If you were not a writer what else would you like to do?

I have travelled some, but if life were more accessible, I would go in an RV to every state, find interesting people, and tell their stories—oops, back to writing again!
Career-wise, I believe God has so ordained and ordered my steps that past background has prepared me to be a writer.
I have sold toys, Tupperware, makeup, encyclopedias, appliances, and furniture.
I have slung food, cafeteria style and worked a soda fountain and gift shop.
I have worked in libraries.
I worked as a home daycare provider, kindergarten teacher, taught grades 6 through 12.
I have been a college liaison counselor for Job Corps and taught college prep classes.
I have been a social worker, mental health center counselor, case manager for the Baptist Children’s Village.
I have been a public speaker in the area of family life.
Those were my jobs, but my life was working for my family as wife, mother, mother-in-law, daughter, daughter-in-law, and grandmother.

Connect with Dorothy on Facebook

You can purchase her book on Amazon