A story of 2 teenage girls with tumours

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A story of 2 teenage girls with tumours


September 14th, 2013 | Author: Contributions



Last August, the most shocking piece of news almost
shattered me and my family. “Your 19 year old daughter has tumours in her chest
and lung. If it is cancerous, it could be stage 3 or 4 based on the MRI
indication of the tumour sizes”. The GH Cancer Centre broke the news to us.

My daughter was coughing for 6 months and had medical treatments at
Polyclinics and also private clinic GP for at least 5 times but was treated for
cough and common cold each time with another course of Antibiotics. It was at
the insistence of my wife after my daughter told us she started coughing blood
that the doctor agreed to send her for an X-ray. The result showed dark shadows
of the right lung and upper middle chest. I was hoping it might be TB when the
Polyclinic referred my daughter (from here on renamed as “S” to protect her
identity) to the Singapore Cancer Centre to do a series of CT and MRI
examinations.

Conclusion, she has a large tumour in her chest cavity and also right lung.
They tried biopsy but got negative result. However CT scan confirmed suspected
“Teratoma”, just uncertain whether it is benign or malignant. That’s when the
fear really set in. What if it was malignant? Doctors and surgeon at Cancer
Centre recommended immediate surgery to remove tumour to get a better assessment
her condition.

Friends surrounded us with prayers when we finally agreed to go ahead with
the open chest surgery. The Good Doctor told us we need to queue for surgery but
he will FIGHT for a vacancy if and when there was cancellation as he said “no
time to lose with possibly such a late stage of tumour/cancer”. I got a call a
week later to say, “come to the hospital tonight to sign the agreement to
operate on S early next morning”. We were really in a dilemma as the lead
surgeon explained then and there that was a 10% chance for the patient in such
open chest surgery not waking up and if they accidentally cut into the main
artery adjoining the tumour lump, the chance of complication and death is quite
high..

Fast forward. Last week, I went with S for her anniversary check up. After CT
scan, the surgeon who by now had left GH Cancer Centre told us the good news is
there is no sign of a recurrence. As the tumour was benign, no need for any post
surgery treatment required. The good surgeon congratulated S and said she now
has a clean bill of health.

He then related to us a sad story. A young teenage girl patient, 14 years
old, who has a similar but less serious tumour condition, requiring open chest
surgery was operated by his ex-colleagues at GH had passed away, a few days post
operation, a week or so ago.

The girl delayed her operation as she was hoping to finish her final term
examination in Sep before the major operation.

The chilling thoughts the good surgeon left us was “the surgeon who operated
on this poor teenage girl was supposed to be the one originally schedule to
operate on S”.

What went wrong, we may ask?

No one really can say with certainty.

What we heard from the good surgeon was GH now does not have senior surgeons
who are very experienced and most likely many good and experienced doctors chose
to leave GH, like our good surgeon did, because of internal politics which
favours elitist approach. I would not delved more into what I heard from our
good doctor/surgeon.

It sufficed to raise two points of queries relating to this sad case.

1) Is the poor teenage girl a victim of circumstances?

Circumstance (A): She tried to conform and cling to the expectation of our
school system which stressed so much on exams. So much so it may be deemed more
important? (to her life???).

Circumstance (B): MOH failed to retained good and experienced TOP surgeons
and doctors. All that we get in Polyclinics nowadays are FT doctors or LO (left
over) and newbie doctors??? Does our Government values lives of such young
teenagers and Singaporean, in general, lesser than the KPI of maintaining an
extremely low budget health services for its
citizens???

Ministry of Hell


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