‘Gave me a second life’: How Singapore doctors saved this boy from rare cancer with experimental treatment

ISOLATION

For a month, the child was isolated in a quiet, clean place in NUH. Due to the expectation that the cure would halt his immune system and render him seriously weakened, he had to be isolated.

” The caregivers, the doctors, all came up, we prepared for a balloon son in Viet Tai”, explained Prof Yeoh.

” So we had to steam all his pyjamas, all his base linens, all his towels, everything has to be fresh.

” We have to see him gowned, masked and everything … he does n’t get to see people, but just masked faces in and out during that period.”

An autoclave system uses gas at stress to kill harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi and germs on products.

Madam Nguyen Thi Kieu Anh, his mother, had not ease her son and was unsure whether the treatment do work.

Viet Tai’s mother could just see as her brother underwent the treatment because she was absent from her usual assist system and struggling with the language barrier.

” As a mom, seeing my child having to go through the different kinds of treatment, and he had to suffer the pain … I was thus heartbroken. I felt useless – like I could n’t help him,” Mdm Nguyen told CNA through a translator.

There were also useful problems. Viet Tai was a secret individual at the doctor because he was not a resident of Singapore and was unable to apply for any subsidies.

The expenses started to go up as a result of spending months or even months in a specially designed confinement ward.

The general public intervened. A give. A donation website was created and an india page created. With donations ranging from S$ 1 to S$ 5, 000, mostly from strangers, they raised more than S$ 115, 000 for the family.

Shielded from the rest of the world, Viet Tai thrived. He started recovering, raising hope that this experimental therapy was working.

Viet Tai’s dying came to an end in a month, for the first time in eight weeks.

Today, more than four-and-a-half decades later, he remains cancer-free.