Government MP Marlene Farrugia today wrote about the ordeal she and her partner are going through after the government whip was diagnosed with cancer some weeks ago.

Dr Farrugia is currently accompanying Godfrey Farrugia in London, where he will undergo surgery.

In her opinion piece in The Malta Independent today, Dr Farrugia says the behaviour of the people around the directly afflicted might be crucial to their ultimate all-round recovery.

She writes about the impact the news that someone has cancer has on their loved ones. “Needless to say, on hearing the news, the instinct is to dissolve, to vanish, to cease to exist in a last ditch attempt to avoid the poisoned arrow hissing through the air with predatory velocity as it singles one out with a savage precision. Such a sensation is only momentary, however. Yes, I am one of many feeling like the snail we absentmindedly crush so often when we are out for a walk in the countryside after the first rain,” she writes.

Read Marlene Farrugia’s full blog here.