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WHEN his son was diagnosed with leukaemia 13 years ago at the age of three, doctors told him that the prognosis was bleak.
Now that his boy is better, Foreign Minister George Yeo said, he knows exactly who to thank: his son’s nurses.
The minister’s comments, made yesterday at the opening of a regional conference here for Catholic nurses, are believed to be the first reported revelation about his family’s struggle with cancer.
“My youngest son was diagnosed with leukaemia when he was a young child,” he told the roomful of some 300 nurses and delegates from 14 countries.
“Then he went to chemo, it came back, second round chemo, it came back, until about six or seven years ago, doctors said it was very bleak and he needed a bone marrow transplant.”
Mr Yeo said his son was treated at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in the United States for nine months.
He visited his son, together with his wife and other children, six times in that time, and described the care of the staff there as “simply extraordinary”.
“My son is well now, thank God for that,” said Mr Yeo. His son received a bone marrow transplant almost six years ago.
Mr Yeo’s personal story struck a chord with his audience, gathered at the YWCA Fort Canning Lodge to discuss health-care issues such as the provision of holistic care beyond physical needs.
The group, comprising nurses from countries such as South Korea, Vietnam and the United States, will also make field visits to hospitals here over the weekend. The conference ends tomorrow.
Mr Yeo, who was health minister from 1994 to 1997, also spoke of the care he received when he contracted measles in 1997 and had to be hospitalised for 10 days.
“It was very severe back then. The hospital arranged for my wife to sleep beside me in another bed, so she became my nurse... It made a huge, huge difference.”
Of the care his late father received from a Catholic nurse after a toe amputation, he said: “Making sure the patient has hope, giving the patient that, that makes a profound difference.”
The Regional Conference of Catholic Nurses and Medico-Social Assistants is organised by the Catholic Nurses Guild in Singapore. This is the 10th such conference and the second held here.
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