Singaporean NSF stricken by illness comes close to death thrice in a month

By Andrea Saadan
AsiaOne
Mar 2, 2017

Imagine coming face-to-face with death not once, but thrice.

One young Singaporean man had to go through such a trying experience - all within the same month.

Henry Seah, 22, was still serving his National Service (NS) when he suddenly struck ill.

He was diagnosed with a form of pneumonia in October 2016 and had to be placed on life support at the National University Hospital.

Health complications occurred even as he laid unconscious in an induced coma, which led to a brain hemorrhage.

His sister, Cindy, has since stepped forward to share their family's gut-wrenching ordeal, and started a fundraising campaign on crowd-funding page, GoGetFunding.com.

Her Facebook post has garnered over 400 shares at the time of writing, with $15,445 in donations collected.

The money raised is expected to go towards "his near-to-half-a-century of life visiting the doctor and acquiring prosthesis" and also rehabilitation and transport assistance, such as a motorised wheelchair.

A donor, Wang Qiuyu, left a message on the page saying: "Stay strong. I believe there will be many people around who will help you tide through this difficult time."

Cindy also shared pictures of her brother both in happier times and during his stay at the hospital.

During his month-long stay in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), Henry's fingers and toes had slowly turned red, and eventually black, due to gangrene.

A photo of his infected feet was also shared by his sister on the page. Ms Seah explained: "We were told that Henry had also suffered from dry gangrene, which had similarly occurred to people who had eaten fresh, uncooked fish and unfortunately infected with GBS.

"In Henry's case, his gangrene had resulted from the prolonged use of adrenaline to support his dangerously low blood pressure."

His fingers and legs will need to be amputated, wrote Ms Seah on the crowd-funding page.

The siblings lost their father to colon cancer four years ago, according to Ms Seah.

However, Henry is said to have "remained grateful and positive" despite his difficult situation.

His sister added that he has since passed his Operationally Ready Date (ORD) last month.

In her latest update, Ms Seah left a note to say that her brother would be going for a "life-changing operation" on Friday (Mar 3).

She did not go into specifics with regard to what the surgery would do for Henry.

She ended the post by saying: "We have been receiving so much blessings from the public, I'm sure Henry can pull it through successfully for the operation tomorrow."

ssandrea@sph.com.sg