MAKING A DIFFERENCE
A Helping Hand Temple University student Syed Waseem launches a nonprofit foundation, The Muzaffar Brain Trust, in honor of his late father to assist local families caring for loved ones BY HABEEBA HUSAIN
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bout an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, a family spent the past year and a half recovering from the loss of their father to Stage Four brain cancer. The pandemic, oddly enough, helped. “That was kind of like a blessing in disguise, keeping us all together,” says Syed Waseem, 20, the eldest of three siblings. “After an event like this, it’s nice to stay home, recuperate ... before everybody actually returns back to normal life.” Waseem, along with his mother, brother and sister, is trying to turn his family’s space into a home again after his father succumbed to glioblastoma — an aggressive type of cancer that can occur in the brain or spinal cord — in the fall of 2019. “It was almost like being in a warzone because you’re hearing cries of pain at night, you’re barely sleeping, you’re giving morphine around the clock,” Waseem says. After his father’s diagnosis, Waseem knew there would be a lot to juggle in terms of college, finances and of course caring for his father, but he didn’t realize to what extent. “Everything became top priority. There was a list — this has to get done first, this has to get done first, this has to get done first,” he says. Soon enough, the to-do list became overwhelming. Real fears set in about the cost of living from groceries to bills, from medications to hospice care. “I saw the bill for the chemo pills. My dad only took them five days out of the month, and it was upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars that the insurance would pay,” Waseem relates. “Someone losing their insurance — it’s pretty scary.” He took on three jobs to help out financially. While at home, he cared for his father when his mother worked a night shift. “My brother and I were lifting [my father] to the point where I was [taking] Advil every day because of my back pain,”
Syed Waseem wearing the foundation’s shirt he sells to raise money
Waseem explains. “I would work throughout the day, study at night, getting maybe two to four hours of sleep. That’s how it was for almost a year and a half.” Although he had a full course load as a math, computer science, and neuroscience triple-major at Temple University, Waseem limited his schooldays to only once or twice a week due to everything going on at home.
“I was teaching myself organic chemistry, theoretical math, and complex data structures for comp sci while sitting at my dad’s bedside,” he says. One Saturday morning, Waseem had an organic chemistry exam scheduled. It started at 6:30 a.m. He looked at the clock — 4:30. He had to leave in an hour if he wanted to make it on time, but he hadn’t studied for it. Three jobs, three majors, bills, lack of sleep, a terminally ill parent — when do you cope? “The emotional aspect was there, but you’re always expected to push that down for the greater good, for your future,” he states. “But at that point, does this future even matter?” He wondered why the empathy from professors, bosses and healthcare providers was nowhere to be found. “No one is willing to show anybody any humanity in this situation, except for family of course,” he says. “My dad always taught us to never take a helping hand … but at some point in life, everybody needs help.” That’s when Waseem decided he would do anything possible to ensure that others wouldn’t feel the same stresses and strains he and his family did while caring for a loved one. He wanted to be that help, share that humanity and show that empathy he so desperately needed. “No one else should have to go through that. It’s a type of thing when someone says, ‘I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy ever.’ I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, period — past, present or future,” he says. Thus, last summer, Waseem founded a nonprofit organization named after his father, The Muzaffar Brain Trust (www. muzaffarbraintrust.org). The organization aims to assist struggling local families in small ways, whether that be buying groceries for a week, paying an internet bill or hiring a nurse for a few extra hours on the weekend.
THE MUZAFFAR BRAIN TRUST, THOUGH LAUNCHED DURING THE PANDEMIC, HAS ALREADY HELPED A FEW FAMILIES WITH ITS LIMITED POOL OF RESOURCES. EVENTUALLY, THE GOAL IS TO EXPAND THIS POOL AND SHARE STORIES ONLINE TO NURTURE UNDERSTANDING AMONG THE GREATER COMMUNITY.
MAY/JUNE 2021 ISLAMIC HORIZONS 47
