‘Probably a bad dream’: Stage 4 cancer at 30 and how this millennial is navigating through it

SINGAPORE: The last thing Lee Hwee Ling expected on her wedding day was to wake up on the floor, surrounded by petrified guests. She was midway through her speech when the world suddenly tilted.

“I said something like, ‘Bob, I don’t feel well. I’m going to pass out,’ and the next thing (I knew), I’d collapsed,” she recounts.

What most guests did not know was that just a month earlier — shortly after celebrating her 30th birthday — Lee had been diagnosed with Stage 4 appendiceal cancer, a rare disease that had spread to her abdomen and ovaries.

By the time she walked down the aisle, she was in the thick of her second round of chemotherapy. The fainting fit, her oncologist later said, was probably brought on by a mix of dehydration, fatigue and stress.

Even now, he adds, thinking about that moment gives him “the shudders”.

Given the stage and cell type of Lee’s cancer, remission was a long shot. Instead, she faced a lifetime of treatment for as long as she keeps up the fight.

“Is this really happening?” she recalls thinking. “This is probably a bad dream. I don’t want this to be real.”

At the time, Lee was thriving in a career she loved as a recruitment consultant, with marriage set to mark the start of another exciting chapter.

But cancer had other plans. She underwent a 20-hour surgery to remove her gall bladder, spleen, large intestine and womb. It saved her life but meant giving up her dream of having children.

While she also knew cancer was part of her family’s medical history, nothing prepared her for how early it would come knocking.

“If I have cancer at, say, 70 (or) 80, I guess that’d be … less of a surprise,” she says. “But I was only 30 years old.”

For young people today, though, cancer risk seems higher than before. A 2023 study published in the journal BMJ Oncology found a 79 per cent increase in cancer diagnoses between 1990 and 2019 among those under 50.

As one of three millennials featured in On The Red Dot’s Fighting Cancer series, Lee navigates a life-altering illness while holding on to hope, identity and purpose.

WATCH PART 1: Millennials fighting Stage 4 cancer — How we found out (22:49)

EJ’s father, Edric Kwok, tells CNA: “I kind of knew that … Bob and Hwee wouldn’t have the opportunity to have a kid, so it’d be quite nice … to have a bigger kind of family who’s involved and guiding EJ.”

Lee’s large family also rallies round her. Yeo and her sister Lee May Ling attend every important medical consultation, especially when there are scan results or decisions to be made.

“Sometimes I do get a bit overwhelmed with the amount of information (given), so they help me kind of process it and then break it down,” she says.

Her mother, Tan Siam Kheng, and sister Lee Su Ling handle the driving and cooking, while her other sister, Lee Jing Hong, helps with injections and stoma bag changes — because, as Lee quips, “she’s probably the least squeamish”.