When SARS pushed an infectious diseases doctor toward a search for meaning

In 2003, Dr Leong Hoe Nam came down with a high fever and severe body pain – symptoms he attributed to dengue. After plenty of rest and fluids, his fever subsided. So he and his wife went ahead to attend a conference in New York.

Two days into his trip, he fell ill again.

By then, the patient’s illness had been identified. She was Patient No 1 – Singapore’s first SARS patient. 

This time, he was diagnosed with “atypical pneumonia”.

Before Dr Leong and his wife returned to Singapore, he called a trusted colleague in Singapore to update him on his condition.

It turned out that Dr Leong had contracted a virus while treating a woman with a mystery illness. He happened to be the infectious diseases doctor on-call the day she was admitted. 

By then, the patient’s illness had been identified. The term SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) had just been coined. She was Patient No 1 – Singapore’s first SARS patient. 

Unknown to him, Dr Leong’s phone call would set off a chain reaction. It led to his being quarantined in Frankfurt, Germany for two-and-a-half weeks.

Suffering through SARS

Dr Leong recalled suffering badly.

“I had to cope with hacking bouts of cough. Every single attempt to adjust my posture would result in my coughing out blood.

“One evening, I tried to take deeper and deeper breaths but to no avail. I felt suffocated – as if the air had no oxygen – even though I had on a full-face 100% oxygen mask.

“The sensation of breathlessness was terrifying.

“Work to me is like cheese to a rat. Give me work, I will do. Give me a treadmill, I will run.”

“I was not afraid of death, because all of us will die,” he said. 

“I just knew I had to avoid mechanical ventilation if I wanted to keep the odds in my favour.”

He soon started to recover. But he faced a bigger problem: Inactivity.

The self-declared workaholic was stuck in a German hospital with nothing to stimulate his active mind. He needed to be doing or reading something constantly.

He was used to being busy. Always busy.

“Work to me is like cheese to a rat. Give me work, I will do. Give me a treadmill, I will run.”

The only English text he could find 

Back in 2003, mobile phones were still basic and most people still used a dial-up connection for the Internet. Getting hold of something to read in English was near impossible. The Winter Olympics was showing on the television, but there was only so much figure skating he could watch.

“Jesus was either an incredibly charismatic and influential leader with a bunch of fools for followers, or …”

But his wife, a very young Christian then, had gotten hold of an English bible. She asked him to read it since there was not much else to do. 

Dr Leong, now 50, laughs as he recalls his desperation: “I was a reasonably fervent believer of another faith, but that Bible was the only English text that I could get my hands on!”

His wife suggested that he start with the Gospel of Luke since they were both physicians, as was Luke. 

By the time he finished the Gospel of Luke, Dr Leong thought: “Jesus was either an incredibly charismatic and influential leader with a bunch of fools for followers, or there is indeed a true God and Jesus is the Son of God.”

He could not decide if the God of the Bible was real … or not.

Dr Leong in his office at Rophi Clinic; “rophi” is a Hebrew word which means “to heal”.

He and his wife eventually returned to Singapore and fought in the ongoing battle of the SARS crisis.

On May 31, 2003, Singapore was declared SARS-free, and life went on. 

Sundays a waste of time?

The next year, Dr Leong moved to London to pursue his PhD.

Unlike his life in Singapore, he now had a lot of time on his hands. Weekend road trips out of the city were the norm for the couple.

At the insistence of his wife, they found the Chinese Church In London and joined a cell group.

“I detested it because Sunday mornings were my precious mornings off!”

When his wife first started attending church in Singapore, Dr Leong had thought it was an utter waste of time.

“I detested it because Sunday mornings were my precious mornings off!”

But in London, Dr Leong did not mind attending church and cell group with his wife. He made friends with a cell member. His name was Marcus Andrew, and his wife was a doctor.

Andrew answered many of Dr Leong’s questions about the faith and pointed him to resources on Christianity.

In 2006, Dr Leong was having trouble in his research. His experiments just weren’t working out. And he could not find anyone to ask for advice. He was stuck.

By then, Dr Leong had heard enough about God and decided to pray and ask for help with his work.

“God, help me get my experiments working. Just help me.”

Nothing happened.

Eventually, he started to bargain with God. “But You really need to help me with this.”

Even though frustrated, but he kept praying.

Eventually, he started to bargain with God: “OK God, I’ll do it Your way. Whatever You want, I will do. But You really need to help me with this.”

Still nothing happened.

Then one day, as Dr Leong was walking from the tube at Hampstead station towards his college, he changed his prayer.

“That’s it. God, come what may, I submit to You. If the experiments work, then they work. If they don’t work, I still submit to Your authority in my life,” he prayed.

Suddenly, “I literally felt the warmth of God’s presence. He was hugging me! God said to me, ‘You are my son, you are my beloved son.’ And all my stress and anxiety about work, everything, just melted away,” he said.

Dr Leong remembers thinking: “OK, it doesn’t matter. Whether my experiment succeeds or not, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got God with me now.”

If not for SARS …

Dr Leong says that he is often asked if he has any regrets about SARS. 

He takes a moment to compose himself before saying: “God is very, very, very dear to me. If I had to go through SARS a hundred times over just to know the God whom I love, I’d do it.

“If God hadn’t taken me away from the distractions of work, I would never have read the Gospel of Luke.”

“If I had to go through SARS a hundred times over just to know the God, I’d do it.”

And if he had not read that Gospel, he would never have been confronted with Jesus.

Many people might believe that science and God do not mix. But while Dr Leong keeps abreast of new developments in science, he leaves room for God to intervene and guide him through every case.

So much so that his colleagues have been known to say that he “performs miracles” on his patients.

Dr Leong attributes the good work he does to God. Clarifying that it is not his brilliance. But, rather, fruits of his obedience to the promptings of God.

“God’s hand is on my work now. Without Him, all the work that I do would be useless.”

This is an excerpt of an article that first appeared in Salt&Light.

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