<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%"><TBODY><TR>'How can I give up a fight? It's not my way'
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Cancer-stricken Dr William Tan shares with Health Correspondent Salma Khalik the trials of his illness and speaks about his absolute commitment to beat the disease </TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
</TD><TD vAlign=bottom>
During the interview, Dr Tan wore two masks to protect his weakened immune system, a result of his ongoing chemotherapy treatment. -- ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Last year, Dr William Tan gave more than 30 inspirational talks around the world, sharing the secrets of turning adversity into opportunity.
He is well suited to that role, having overcome his disability - he has been paralysed from the waist down since the age of two due to polio - to become both a medical doctor and neuroscientist, a charity fund-raiser and a wheelchair marathoner who has set many world records.
But on April 14 this year, the Fulbright scholar met a hurdle he was not prepared to tackle. He was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, a cancer where the B blood cells which normally fight infections are not only damaged but also grow out of control, pushing out other blood cells.
Doctors told him that without treatment, he would not survive a year.
He was understandably devastated by the news. 'I told my doctors I chose not to get treated. Let the bone marrow run its course and say goodbye,' Dr Tan, 52, told The Sunday Times last week.
'I felt frustrated. I had invested a lot in my future. I worked very hard to build up myself, overcome my disability. Now, there's not going to be a future. I was very angry.'
Just 10 days earlier, on April 5, he had been in Paris for the Paris marathon.
Among his many marathon feats was the one achieved in 2007, when he claimed a world record by doing seven marathons in seven continents in 27 days.
That year, he also became the first wheelchair athlete to do the marathon in the Arctic. He had attempted a marathon in the Antarctica in 2005, but had to abandon it halfway because of the glacial snow and m&d. In each of these feats, he battled sub-zero temperatures as he pushed his wheelchair, fitted with special spiked wheels.
But he had yet to race in Paris and it was something he had wanted to do for a long time.
'I finally went to Paris. What a place. I'd heard so much about the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe... I was very confident. I was ready to take Paris,' he said, his eyes lighting up at the memory.
A few days before the race, his nose had bled. He attributed it to the dry spring weather, or an allergy to the pollen in the air.
Then, as the starter's gun went off and he was fully geared up to race, his nose started to drip blood like a leaky tap. 'My wristband was getting soaked. It's hard to squeeze the nose when pushing a wheelchair,' he said with a grimace.
He was forced to pull up by the side of the road to do that. By then, the marathon runners had made up for the 10-minute head start given to wheelchair participants.
Stuck in the crowd and with his nose still bleeding, he was forced to slow down and he finished the 42.2km race in 3 hours and 22 minutes, a far cry from his best time of 1 hour and 53 minutes.
'I felt very embarrassed. I was the last wheelchair athlete to cross the line.'
Being a doctor, he self-medicated. He went to a pharmacy and bought some Vitamin K, which stopped the bleeding.
One of the first things he did upon returning to Singapore was to find out the cause of the bleeding.
That was when the bottom fell out of his world. Doctors said he had cancer.
'My first reaction was, it can't happen. I have so many things lined up.'
He had just agreed to help raise funds for an orphanage in Shanghai and for another which houses HIV-positive children in Kenya.
He had also relocated to Singapore from Australia in January last year. He had been working as a doctor in a hospital in Sydney but wanted to spend more time with his 82-year-old mother and siblings here.
He was feeling good, 'unstoppable', with so many things he still wanted to do and so many projects lined up, including practising medicine and his international speaking tours.
'I've been living life at a high speed, on the fast track. My days were really packed. I was living 19 hours a day. Sleep was not important.'
He tried to fool himself for the first few days after the initial diagnosis. Perhaps his platelet count was low because he was fighting an infection, he told himself.
'I was hoping for a miracle. There was a lot of denial,' he admitted.
The Sunday Times reported Dr Tan's blood cancer on May 10, although the type was erroneously stated as acute myelogenous leukaemia (AML).
Dr Tan wrote to the newspaper to say that he did not have AML and added that he does, however, have his 'share of chronic illnesses and pain, which was a personal matter that did not warrant any major concern and publicity'.
He wrote that letter to The Straits Times, he explained last week, because he was concerned his mother would suffer a breakdown should she read the article.
</TR><!-- headline one : end --><TR>Cancer-stricken Dr William Tan shares with Health Correspondent Salma Khalik the trials of his illness and speaks about his absolute commitment to beat the disease </TR><!-- show image if available --><TR vAlign=bottom><TD width=330>
</TD><TD width=10>
During the interview, Dr Tan wore two masks to protect his weakened immune system, a result of his ongoing chemotherapy treatment. -- ST PHOTO: CHEW SENG KIM
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Last year, Dr William Tan gave more than 30 inspirational talks around the world, sharing the secrets of turning adversity into opportunity.
He is well suited to that role, having overcome his disability - he has been paralysed from the waist down since the age of two due to polio - to become both a medical doctor and neuroscientist, a charity fund-raiser and a wheelchair marathoner who has set many world records.
But on April 14 this year, the Fulbright scholar met a hurdle he was not prepared to tackle. He was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, a cancer where the B blood cells which normally fight infections are not only damaged but also grow out of control, pushing out other blood cells.
Doctors told him that without treatment, he would not survive a year.
He was understandably devastated by the news. 'I told my doctors I chose not to get treated. Let the bone marrow run its course and say goodbye,' Dr Tan, 52, told The Sunday Times last week.
'I felt frustrated. I had invested a lot in my future. I worked very hard to build up myself, overcome my disability. Now, there's not going to be a future. I was very angry.'
Just 10 days earlier, on April 5, he had been in Paris for the Paris marathon.
Among his many marathon feats was the one achieved in 2007, when he claimed a world record by doing seven marathons in seven continents in 27 days.
That year, he also became the first wheelchair athlete to do the marathon in the Arctic. He had attempted a marathon in the Antarctica in 2005, but had to abandon it halfway because of the glacial snow and m&d. In each of these feats, he battled sub-zero temperatures as he pushed his wheelchair, fitted with special spiked wheels.
But he had yet to race in Paris and it was something he had wanted to do for a long time.
'I finally went to Paris. What a place. I'd heard so much about the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe... I was very confident. I was ready to take Paris,' he said, his eyes lighting up at the memory.
A few days before the race, his nose had bled. He attributed it to the dry spring weather, or an allergy to the pollen in the air.
Then, as the starter's gun went off and he was fully geared up to race, his nose started to drip blood like a leaky tap. 'My wristband was getting soaked. It's hard to squeeze the nose when pushing a wheelchair,' he said with a grimace.
He was forced to pull up by the side of the road to do that. By then, the marathon runners had made up for the 10-minute head start given to wheelchair participants.
Stuck in the crowd and with his nose still bleeding, he was forced to slow down and he finished the 42.2km race in 3 hours and 22 minutes, a far cry from his best time of 1 hour and 53 minutes.
'I felt very embarrassed. I was the last wheelchair athlete to cross the line.'
Being a doctor, he self-medicated. He went to a pharmacy and bought some Vitamin K, which stopped the bleeding.
One of the first things he did upon returning to Singapore was to find out the cause of the bleeding.
That was when the bottom fell out of his world. Doctors said he had cancer.
'My first reaction was, it can't happen. I have so many things lined up.'
He had just agreed to help raise funds for an orphanage in Shanghai and for another which houses HIV-positive children in Kenya.
He had also relocated to Singapore from Australia in January last year. He had been working as a doctor in a hospital in Sydney but wanted to spend more time with his 82-year-old mother and siblings here.
He was feeling good, 'unstoppable', with so many things he still wanted to do and so many projects lined up, including practising medicine and his international speaking tours.
'I've been living life at a high speed, on the fast track. My days were really packed. I was living 19 hours a day. Sleep was not important.'
He tried to fool himself for the first few days after the initial diagnosis. Perhaps his platelet count was low because he was fighting an infection, he told himself.
'I was hoping for a miracle. There was a lot of denial,' he admitted.
The Sunday Times reported Dr Tan's blood cancer on May 10, although the type was erroneously stated as acute myelogenous leukaemia (AML).
Dr Tan wrote to the newspaper to say that he did not have AML and added that he does, however, have his 'share of chronic illnesses and pain, which was a personal matter that did not warrant any major concern and publicity'.
He wrote that letter to The Straits Times, he explained last week, because he was concerned his mother would suffer a breakdown should she read the article.
