{"id":53003,"date":"2026-05-17T09:01:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T01:01:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53003"},"modified":"2026-05-17T09:01:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T01:01:46","slug":"i-knew-beating-cancer-would-be-tough-what-i-didnt-expect-was-the-crippling-loss-of-identity-as-i-returned-to-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=53003","title":{"rendered":"I knew beating cancer would be tough. What I didn&#8217;t expect was the crippling loss of identity as I returned to work"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>I had been fit and strong right up to that point. I went running with my boys twice a week, taking them to the gym for strength training afterwards. None of us had seen it coming.<\/p>\n<p>What followed were months of hospital stays, treatment and preparation for a bone marrow transplant at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), where its haematology wards became a strange kind of &#8220;home&#8221; to me over time.<\/p>\n<p>Against the odds, a fully matched, unrelated donor was found locally through the bone marrow donor programme, and the transplant saved my life.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>A CRIPPLING SENSE OF IDENTITY LOSS\u00a0<\/h2>\n<p>By October 2024, exactly one year after my diagnosis, I was in remission. However, physically and psychologically, recovery took much longer.<\/p>\n<p>The intensive chemotherapy that I had before the transplant, followed by two years of maintenance chemo, left me with neuropathy and made rebuilding my strength and stamina a slow, grinding process.<\/p>\n<p>Neuropathy is a condition caused by nerve damage that leads to pain, weakness, numbness or tingling in one or more parts of your body. In my case, I felt it acutely in my limbs.<\/p>\n<p>Even as my body slowly healed, my confidence did not immediately return.<\/p>\n<p>The next month, I was given the green light to return to work. However, I found that the idea of stepping back into professional life filled me with uncertainty \u2013 the kind that has more to do with my identity than with my capabilities.<\/p>\n<p>Before cancer, I had been a physics teacher and head of department at Anglo-Chinese School (Independent), or ACS(I). But after months away from work, I found myself wondering whether the person who once carried those responsibilities still existed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.channelnewsasia.com\/today\/voices\/going-back-work-after-survive-cancer-6120946\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read Full Article At Source <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had been fit and strong right up to that point. I went running with my boys twice a week, taking them to the gym&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":53004,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/53004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}