Testimony of Dr. Richard Teo (died on 18th October 2012)
Below is the transcript of the
talk of Dr. Richard Teo, who was a 40-year-old millionaire and
cosmetic surgeon with a stage-4 lung cancer, sharing at a Dental
Christian Fellowship Meeting. He would have liked to share this with
you too.
HIS BACKGROUND
Hi good morning to all of you. My
voice is a bit hoarse from the chemotherapy, so please bear with me.
I thought I'll just introduce myself. My name is Richard, I’m a
friend of Danny’s, who invited me here.
I’d just begin to say that I’m
a typical product of today’s society. Before this, I was talking
about how the media influences us etc. So I’m a typical product of
what the media portrays. From young, I’ve always been under the
influence and impression that to be happy, is to be successful. And
to be successful, is to be wealthy. So I led my life according to
this motto.
Coming from a poor average family, back
in those days, I was highly competitive, whether in sports, studies,
leadership. I wanted it all. I’ve been there, done that. But at the
end of the day, it’s still about money.
So in my recent last years, I was
a trainee in ophthalmology, but I was getting impatient, cos I had
friends of mine who were going out into private practise, making
tonnes of money. And there I was, stuck in a traineeship. So I said,
‘Enough, it’s getting too long.’ At that time, there was a
surge in protégés of aesthetic medicine. I’m sure you’re aware,
aesthetic medicine had peaked over the last few years, and I saw good
money in there. So much so that I said, ‘Forget about
ophthalmology, I’m gonna do aesthetic medicine.’ So that’s what
I did.
The truth is, nobody makes heroes
out of the average GP in the neighbourhood. They don't. They make
heroes out of rich celebrities, politicians, rich and famous people.
So I wanted to be one of these. I dived straight into aesthetic
medicine. People were not willing to pay when I was doing locum back
in those days. Anything more than $30, they would complain that “Wah,
this lo kun (doctor) jing qwee (very expensive)”. They made noise
and they were not happy. But the same people were willing to pay $10
000 for a liposuction. So I said, ‘Well, let’s stop healing the
sick, I’m gonna become a beautician; a medically-trained
beautician.’
And that was what I did –
liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgeries, you name it, we
do it. It was very good money. My clinic, when we started off,
waiting time was 1 week; 1 month; became 2 months; became 3 months.
There was so much demand that people were literally queuing up to
have aesthetic work done on them. Vain women – easy life!
So the clinic grew. I was so
overwhelmed, from 1 doctor, I employed 2, then 3, then 4 doctors, and
carried on. Nothing is ever enough. I wanted more and more and more.
So much so that we set up shop in Indonesia to lure all the
Indonesian tai tai’s. We set up shop, set up a team of people
there, to get more Indonesian patients to come in.
So, things were doing well. I’m
there, my time has arrived.
Around some time in February last
year, I said, ‘OK, I have so much spare cash, it’s time to get my
first Ferrari. So there I was, getting ready for the deposit. ‘OK!
There comes my first Ferrari!’ I was looking for land, to share
with some of my friends. I have a banker friend who makes $5 million
a year. So I thought, ‘Come, let’s come together. Let’s buy
some land and build our houses.’
I was at my prime, getting ready
to enjoy. At the same time, my friend Danny had a revival. They were
going back to church, some of my close friends. They told me,
‘Richard, come, join us, come back to church.’
I have been a Christian for 20
years; I was baptised 20 years ago, but it was because it was
fashionable to be a Christian then. All my friends were becoming
Christians then. It was fashionable! I wanted to be baptised, so that
when I filled in a form, I could put there “Christian” – feels
good. In truth, I had never had a bible; I don’t know what the
bible is all about.
I went to church for a while,
after some time, I got tired. I said it’s time to go to NUS, stop
going to church. I had a lot more things to pursue in NUS – girls,
studies, sports etc. After all, I had achieved all these things
without God today, so who needs God? I myself can achieve anything I
want.
In my arrogance, I told them,
“You know what? You go tell your pastor to change your sermon to
2pm. I will consider coming to church.” Such arrogance! And I said
1 statement in addition to that – till date, I don’t know I’ve
regretted saying that – I told Danny and my friends, “If God
really wanted me to come back to church, He will give me a sign.”.
Lo and behold, 3 weeks later, I was back at church.
THE DIAGNOSIS
In March 2011, out of the blue –
I was still running around, ‘cause I’m a gym freak and I always
go to the gym training, running, swimming 6 days a week. I had some
backache, and that’s all I had, but it was persistent. And so I
went for an MRI to exclude prolapsed disc. And the day before I had
my scan, I was still in the gym, lifting heavy weights, doing my
squats. And the next day, they found that half my spine had bone
marrow replacement. I said, “Woah, sorry, what’s that?”
We had a PET scan the next day,
and they diagnosed that I had terminal lung cancer, stage 4B. It
had spread to the brain, half the spine, whole of my lungs were
filled with tumour, liver, adrenals…
I said, “Can’t be, I was just
at the gym last night, what’s going on?” I’m sure you know how
it feels – though I’m not sure if you know how it feels. One
moment I was there at the peak, the next day, this news came and I
was totally devastated. My whole world just turned upside down.
I couldn’t accept it. I
have a hundred relatives on both sides, my mom and my dad. 100 of
them. And not a single one has cancer. To me, in my mind, I have
good genes, I’m not supposed to be having this! Some of my
relatives are heavy chain smokers. Why am I having lung cancer? I
was in denial.
HIS ENCOUNTER WITH GOD
So the next day, I was still in a
state of denial, still unable to accept what was going on. There I
was lying in an operating theatre in a hospital, for a needle biopsy
(for histology). There I was, just completed the biopsy, and lying in
the operating theatre. The nurses and doctors had left; told me I had
to wait for 15 minutes to do a check X-ray to make sure there’s no
pneumothorax (a complication).
And there I was, lying on the
operating table, staring blankly at the ceiling in a cold, quiet
operating theatre. Suddenly I just heard an inner voice; it was not
like coming from outside. It was inside. This small inner voice that
I had never felt before. And it said very specifically, it said,
“This has to happen to you, at your prime, because it’s the only
way you can understand.”
I said, “Woah, why did that
come from?” You know, when you speak to yourself, you’d say, “OK,
what time should I leave this place? Where shall I have dinner after
this?” You’d speak from a first person point of view. You don’t
say, “Where should YOU go after this?” Whereas the voice that
came spoke as a third party. It said, “This has to happen to YOU,
at YOUR prime, because this is the only way YOU can understand.” At
that time, my emotions just overflowed and I broke down and cried,
alone there. And I knew then, subsequently, what it means to
understand that why this is the only way.
Because I had been so proud of
myself, my whole life, I needed nobody else. I was gifted with things
that I could do, why do I need anybody else? I was just so full of
myself that there was no other way I could have turned back to God.
In fact, if I were diagnosed with
stage 1 or 2, I would have been looking around busily for the best
cardiothoracic surgeon, remove a section of the lobe (do a
lobectomy), do preventive chemotherapy…The chances of it being
cured is extremely high. Who needs God? But I had stage 4B. No man
can help, only God can.
A series of events happened after
that. I wasn’t sold after that, because of the inner voice, I
became believing, prayers, all that. No I wasn’t. To me, it was
just ‘maybe there was a voice; or maybe that was just me talking to
myself.’ I didn’t buy the story.
What happened next was that I was
being prepared for chemotherapy. I started off with a whole brain
radiation therapy first; takes about 2 -3 weeks. In the meantime they
prepared me for chemotherapy, supplements etc. One of the things
they used for chemo was a thing called Zometa. Zometa - they use
it to strengthen the bones; once the bone marrow (replacement) is
cured of cancer cells, it becomes hollow, so we need Zometa to
strengthen the bone to prevent compression fractures.
One of the side effects of Zometa
is that it can cause osteonecrosis (bone death) of the jaw, and I had
to have my wisdom teeth removed. Years ago, I had my upper
wisdom teeth removed, cos it was giving me trouble. The lower ones
didn’t give me trouble so I said, “Forget it, just leave it.”
So of cause, Danny volunteered to remove it for me.
So there I was, lying there in a
dental chair, asking myself, suffering all the side effects of
radiotherapy, and now I have to go through wisdom tooth surgery. As
if I’ve not had enough to suffer! So I asked Danny, “Eh, bro, is
there any other way? Can I not go though this?” He said, “Yes,
you can pray.”
I said, “What’s there to
lose? Ok lah, pray lah!” And so we prayed. And we did an X-ray
after that. Everything was all there, all the appliances and
everything. And lo and behold, the Xray showed that there was no
wisdom teeth in the lower jaw. I know most people have 4 wisdom
teeth, maybe some have none, but to be missing one or 2, as I
understand – I’m not too sure, as I understand – is not that
common.
Still I was, “Nah, I don’t
care about that.” To me, as long as I didn’t have to take out the
tooth, I was happy. At that point, I still wasn’t sold on prayers.
Maybe it was just a coincidence – for whatever it’s worth.
I continued meeting my
oncologist, asking him, “How long do I have?” I asked him. He
said, not more than 6 months. I said, “Even with chemotherapy?”
About 3 – 4 months, he said.
I couldn’t grasp that. It was
difficult to come to terms. And even as I went through radiotherapy,
I was struggling everyday, especially when I wake up, hoping that
it’s just a nightmare; when I wake up, it’s all over.
As I was struggling, day after
day, I went into depression, which is the typical denial, depression
blah blah blah that you go through. But for 1 reason, I don’t know
why, there was this specific day that I was supposed to meet my
oncologist. At about 2pm, I felt this sudden surge of peace, comfort,
and in fact, a little happiness. It was just overflowing. For no
rhyme or reason, it just came about 2pm, as I was getting ready,
dressing up to meet my oncologist. So much so that I whats-apped all
my friends that, “Bros, I just feel so good suddenly! I don’t
know why, it just came!”
And it was only days, or was it
weeks after, that Danny revealed to me that he had fasted for 2 days
for me, and he was bargaining with God, and fasted for 2 dyas, and he
ended his fast at that exact same point, about 2 pm thereabouts, that
this surge of sensation came to me for no rhyme or reason. And I
didn’t know that he was fasting for me. And when he ended the fast,
I felt that sensation!
Whoa, things were getting a bit
too coincidental. I was starting to buy a bit of the story, but still
I wasn’t sold. As days passed by, I completed my radiotherapy,
about 2 weeks plus. Getting ready for chemo, so they let me rest for
a few days.
See, the mortality rate of lung
cancer : Lung cancer has the highest mortality rate. If you add up
breast, colorectal (colon) cancer, and prostate cancer (the top few
cancers in Singapore for men and women), if you add up the mortality
rate of these 3, it still doesn’t add up to lung cancer. Simply
because, you understand, you can remove the prostate, the colon, the
breast, but you cannot remove your lungs.
But there’s about 10% of lung
cancer patients who do pretty well for some reasons, because they
have this specific mutation; we call it the EGFR mutation. And it
happens, only 90% of the time, in Asian ladies who never smoked in
their lives. Me, first of all, I’m male. 2ndly, I’m a social
smoker. I take one a day after dinner; weekends, when my friends
offer me, I take it as well. I’m a light smoker, not a social
smoker. But still, my oncologist was still not hopeful for me to have
this mutation.
The chances of it happening for
me was maybe 3-4% for me to get it. That’s why I was being primed
to go for chemo. But through all the intense prayers, friends
like Danny, people that I don’t even know, it turned out that,
during my waiting for chemo, the results came back that I was EGFR
positive. I was like, “Woah, good news!” Cos now I don’t have
to undergo chemo at that time, because there’s this oral tablet
that you can use to control this disease.
Just to share with you some idea
– this is a CT scan – thorax – of my lungs, before treatment.
AFTER BEFORE
Every single dot there is a
tumour. You can see all the mets (metastasis) there. This is just one
single plane. Literally I had it in both lungs, and I had literally
tens of thousands of tumour. That’s why the oncologist told me,
even with chemo, at most 3-4 months.
But because of this mutation,
they have this oral medication. This is what happened after 2 months
of treatment. As you can see over here; this is what God can do. And
that’s why I’m still here having this opportunity to share with
you. As you can see over here, the difference between before and
after treatment.
At that point, I said, “Well,
it’s to be expected, isn’t it? The medicine is good.” I’m
still not buying the story. Well, the guys prayed for me and the
tumour markers started to come down. 90% of the tumours were wiped
out, and the tumour markers came down to more than 90% over the next
few months.
But still, you know, once you
have the clinical knowledge, you know the statistics. One year
survival, two year survival; having all this knowledge is not a good
thing. Cos you live with the knowledge that even with all this, the
cancer cells are so unstable, they keep mutating. They will overcome
and become resistant to the drugs, and eventually you’re gonna run
out of medication.
So living with this knowledge is
a huge mental struggle, a huge mental torture. Cancer is not just
about a physical struggle, it’s a huge mental torture. How do you
live with no hope? How do you live with not being able to plan for
the next few years? The oncologist tells you to bear with it for the
next 1 – 2 months. So it’s a lot of struggles as I went through:
March, then April. April was my lowest point, in deep depression,
struggling even as I was recovering.
HIS ACCEPTANCE & PEACE
And one of those days, I was
there in bed, struggling in the afternoon, asking God, “Why? Why do
I have to go through this suffering? Why do I have to endure this
hardship, this struggle? Why me?”
As I fell asleep, in my dreamy
state, a vision just came, that says Hebrews 12:7-8.
Now mind you, at this time, I had
not read the bible. I have no clue what’s Hebrews, I don’t even
know how many chapters there are. Totally clueless.
But it says Hebrews 12:7-8, very
specifically.
I didn’t think too much of it.
I just continued sleeping. Then I woke up, and I said, “What’s
there to lose? I’d just check it out lah!” Danny had bought me a
bible; it’s still quite new. I said, “It’s ok, just try.” So
I flipped to the Old Testament. Hebrews to me sounds like something
ancient, so it should be in the Old Testament right? So I flipped
through the Old Testament. No Hebrews there. I was so disappointed.
Then I said, “Maybe New
Testament, let’s have a look!”. WOW – New Testament, there’s
Hebrew’s!! It says Hebrews 12:7-8. It says, “Endure hardship as
discipline as God is treating you as His children.”
I said, “WAH!! Where did that
come from?” I was getting goose pimples all over my body. I said,
“This can’t be, right?” I mean, what’s the chance of
somebody, who has never read the bible, to have a vision of a chapter
of a specific verse, that answers my question directly?
I think God called to me directly
as I was there sleeping, struggling with it, asking God, “Why do I
have to suffer? Why do I have to suffer this?” And God says “Endure
hardship as discipline as God is treating you as His child.”
At this point, the chance of that
happening is even lesser than my EGFR being positive. There’s just
no way; there’s so many millions of thousands of verses in the
bible, how can I just conjure up something like that?
So at that point, I was sold I
said, “YOU WIN! YOU WIN!!”
Ok , I was convinced. And so from
that day onwards, I started believing in my God. And the last time I
heard that inner voice was the end of April. And that inner voice,
same thing, in the afternoon, as I was sleeping (this time I wasn’t
struggling, just going to sleep). In a dreamy state I just heard
Him say, “Help others in hardship.”
It was more like a command,
rather than a statement. And that’s when I embarked on this
journey, helping others in hardship. And I realised that hardship is
not just about being poor. In fact, I think a lot of poor people are
probably happier than a lot of us here. They are so easily contented
with whatever they have, they’re probably pretty happy.
Hardship can happen to rich
people; it can be physical hardship, mental hardship, social, etc.
And also over the last few months, I started to understand what this
true joy is about. In the past, I substituted true joy with the
pursuing of wealth. I thought true joy is about pursuing wealth. Why?
Cos let me put it to you this way, in my death bed, I found no joy
whatsoever in whatever objects I had – my Ferrari, thinking of the
land I was going to buy to build my bungalow etc, having a successful
business.
It brought me ZERO comfort, ZERO
joy, nothing at all. Do you think I can hold onto this piece of metal
and it’s going to give true joy? Nah, it’s not going to happen.
True joy comes from interaction
with other people. And at a lot of times, it is a short term pride,
the past. When you pursue your wealth, Chinese New Year is the best
time to do it. Drive my Ferrari, show off to my relatives, show off
to my friends, do my rounds, and then you thought that was true joy?
You really think that those guys who sold you your Ferrari, they
share their joy with you? And your relatives, wow, they share this
joy with you? In truth, what you have done is just to illicit envy,
jealousy, and even hatred. They are not sharing the joy with you, and
what I have is that short-term pride that wow, I have something you
don’t have! And I thought that was joy!
So what we have is basically a
short-term pride at the expense of somebody else. And that wasn’t
true joy. And I found no joy at all on my deathbed, thinking of my
Ferrari – to hold on to it, sayang it?!?
True joy I discovered comes from
interaction. Over the last few months I was so down. Interaction with
my loved ones, my friends, my brothers in Christ, my sisters in
Christ, and only then was I able to be motivated, able to be
uplifted. To share your sorrow, to share your happiness – that’s
true joy.
And you know what makes you
smile? True joy comes from helping others in hardship, and because
I’ve gone through this, I know what hardship entails. In fact,
there’re some cancer patients who tell me a lot of times, people
come up to them and tell them, “Stay positive. Stay positive.”
Yah, right. You come in my shoes and you try to stay positive! You
don’t know what you’re talking about!
But I have the licence. So I’ve
been going out to meet other fellow cancer patients, to share with
them, encourage them. And I know, because I’ve been through it, and
it’s easier for me to talk to them.
And most importantly, I think
true joy comes from knowing God. Not knowing about God – I mean,
you can read the bible and know about God – but knowing God
personally; getting a relationship with God. I think that’s the
most important. That’s what I’ve learnt.
So if I were to sum it up, I’d
say that the earlier we sort out the priorities in our lives, the
better it is. Don’t be like me – I had no other way. I had to
learn it through the hard way. I had to come back to God to thank Him
for this opportunity because I’ve had 3 major accidents in my past
– car accidents. You know, these sports car accidents – I was
always speeding , but somehow I always came out alive, even with the
car almost being overturned. And I wouldn’t have had a chance. Who
knows, I don’t know where else I’d be going to! Even though I was
baptised it was just a show, but the fact that this has happened, it
gave me a chance to come back to God.
Few things I’d learnt
though:
1. Trust in the Lord your God with all your heart –
this is so important.
2. Is to love and serve others, not
just ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with being
rich or wealthy. I think it’s absolutely alright, cos God has
blessed. So many people are blessed with good wealth, but the trouble
is I think a lot of us can’t handle it. The more we have, the more
we want. I’ve gone through it, the deeper the hole we dig, the more
we get sucked into it, so much so that we worship wealth and lose
focus. Instead of worshipping God, we worship wealth. It’s just a
human instinct. It’s just so difficult to get out of it.
We are all professionals, and
when we go into private practise, we start to build up our wealth –
inevitably. So my thought are, when you start to build up wealth and
when the opportunity comes, do remember that all these things don’t
belong to us. We don’t really own it nor have rights to this
wealth. It’s actually God’s gift to us. Remember that it’s more
important to further His Kingdom rather than to further ourselves.
Anyway I think that I’ve gone
through it, and I know that wealth without God is empty. It is more
important that you fill up the wealth, as you build it up
subsequently, as professionals and all, you need to fill it up with
the wealth of God.
I think that’s about it. It’s
good to share. Thanks.
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