Just the week before her life was turned upside down, Dorothy Ng had gone with her church to the Osanri Choi Jashil Memorial Fasting Prayer Mountain in South Korea.

In her hotel room in Seoul, she heard God speak. 

“I received an impression in my heart from the Holy Spirit that there would be a big episode coming into my life,” she told Salt&Light.

Dorothy and Kenneth praying at Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul during its prayer week.

The couple had started 2024 on a high note, visiting Yoido Full Gospel Church and Prayer Mountain with their church.

On her return, Dorothy went on a business trip with her fiancé and business partner, Kenneth Koh. They had started a pharmaceutical company and had gone to Kuala Lumpur to meet their Malaysian team.

Dorothy graduated with an Associate Degree in Ministry from City Harvest Church’s School of Theology in September 2024 after enduring two serious medical episodes.

The morning of their visit, Dorothy became so dizzy she could not stop vomiting.

“There was no warning. I was just talking when, all of a sudden, I just started vomiting. Everything I saw was upside down and spinning. If I open my eyes I will vomit; I close my eyes and I still vomit.

“I vomited until I was just vomiting air. I was so weak, I couldn’t move and had to crawl out of the toilet.”

Kenneth thought it was food poisoning and the Malaysia team suggested going into a clinic. But Dorothy felt a strong prompting in her heart that she had to go to the hospital.

“Looking back, it was clearly God’s leading that gave me the conviction to head to the Emergency Room at Subang Jaya Medical Centre,” she told Salt&Light.

In the ER, the doctors suspected a stroke and immediately ordered a CT scan. Kenneth could not believe it. “She can still move her limbs,” he told the doctor, “how could it be a stroke?”

The CT scan came back normal but for some reason, the doctor insisted on an MRI for further investigation.

The result was devastating: A stroke had indeed happened on the right side of Dorothy’s cerebellum, with multiple areas of bleeding in the posterior region of her brain.

The diagnosis was multifocal right cerebellar infarct stroke. Dorothy had suffered a stroke at 47.

Gripped by fear

Dorothy was rushed into the ICU. All her vital signs – heart rate, blood pressure, respiratory rate and temperature – were spiralling out of control. The doctor had concerns that another stroke would occur within the next 24 hours. Meanwhile, the vomiting persisted. Even the slightest movement would provoke retching.

“Fear overwhelmed me,” Dorothy told Salt&Light. “Yet in that darkest hour, I still felt the presence of God.

A scan of Dorothy’s brain revealing multiple blood clots. She was diagnosed with Multifocal Right Cerebellar Infarct Stroke.

“The first few days, I had to carry a bag with me for the vomit. The multiple small clots at the back of the brain had impacted my balance and triggered vertigo.

“All my senses were overly sensitive. Slight movement or smells would trigger vomiting. I had severe headaches and couldn’t open my eyes or sit up on my own. I had difficulty coordinating my movement. My legs and hands were weak and I had constant joint pains.”

Doctors could not give her any pain relief medication because her symptoms indicated that there was a high chance of a second or even third stroke. She was only given blood thinners.

Dorothy in the Malaysian hospital. She was so hyper-sensitive even slight movements, light and smells would trigger vomiting.

There was nothing for Dorothy to do but lie with her eyes closed and pray.

“I asked God, ‘So this is the big thing You talked about? Now what?’”

By the third day, Dorothy had not suffered another stroke. She was out of immediate danger but still not in the clear.

“I dare not move because every time I moved, I will vomit and I would have to trouble people to clean me up. So my whole body was so tense.

“Then I heard the Holy Spirit tell me, ‘Fear has gripped you.’ That was the time I started to pray and ask God to release me from this fear.

“Then I had a realisation: ‘It’s fine if I moved. Just vomit, just trouble people to clean me up.’

“That was my breakthrough. Immediately, my heart was like: Wow! The weight was lifted off.”

Heart to heart with God

Dorothy remained in the Malaysian hospital for nearly two weeks.

With the help of physical rehabilitation, she could walk. But the symptoms – over-sensitivity to stimuli triggering bouts of vomiting, joint pains, headaches and general weakness – did not abate.

Even as she recovered, Dorothy experienced constant joint pains and headaches, and had to learn to walk again.

While she did not experience physical healing, she did experience spiritual renewal. The hours in bed with nothing to do but converse with God gave her time to reflect on her faith.

She questioned God why she was suffering with no healing in sight despite the fact that she had faith and was actively serving in church as a cell group leader. Then she had an epiphany.

She realised that there were two ways believers handled illness. They could become bitter when they do not experience healing, or they could end up doubting their faith. 

“But God showed me a third kind of person He wants me to become, the kind of person seeks God not for personal gain or healing but for His purposes.

“I realised that, too often, my motives were mixed. Before this, I sought God because I wanted to feel better or be respected by others. I needed to shift my focus to desiring to fulfil God’s purpose.

“When I recognised that I am unworthy of the gifts He gives me, it humbled me and made me more aware of His heart and intentions.”

When all this dawned on her, Dorothy experienced “a peace so strong and an assurance that God will walk me through”. She no longer worried that others would see her lack of healing as God’s punishment. Neither did she fret over needing help from others.

“I came to the realisation that even if I am not healed, He will send people around me to help me. I can learn new ways of doing what I am supposed to do. God will see me through.”

The UTI that turned out not to be  

Because of the symptoms, Dorothy could not fly home. Instead, she returned to Singapore via ambulance and spent another week at a hospital in Singapore.

It would take three months before she experienced some semblance of normalcy.

It took five hours for Dorothy to travel back to Singapore via ambulance.

When she returned to a Singapore hospital, Dorothy’s cell group members came to see her and pray for her. She has since handed over her cell group to another leader.

A month after that, Dorothy went back to church. Despite the lights and loud music, she did not suffer any dizzy spell or vomiting. By then she had been diagnosed with endometriosis and was on hormone injections which caused joint pains.

“It was a healing service and I was healed of the joint pain. So I was really happy. For the stroke symptoms, the immediate impact of healing was that I could walk around and walk fast without any pain.”

Dorothy giving God glory at the healing service.

Two months later, Dorothy resumed work. By July that year, she and Kenneth were married in an intimate ceremony with just 20 guests because Dorothy still could not “stand crowds or stand for too long”.

A few months after her recovery, Dorothy and Kenneth got married.

They decided to honeymoon nearby in Malaysia. All went smoothly till the fourth day. Dorothy thought it was indigestion at first. When she could not stop shivering, she knew it was something more.

Just a month before they tied the knot, Dorothy had suffered a bout of what doctors diagnosed as urinary tract infection (UTI). Back then, she had shivered so severely that she became breathless and vomited.

Now, she thought that perhaps that infection had not cleared. Again, she felt a pressing need to go to a hospital instead of a clinic.

No longer demanding

It was a good thing she did because what Dorothy had was neither indigestion nor UTI. She had kidney infection.

Too many stones in her right kidney had accumulated, with some descending into her uterus. This resulted in an infection that caused her blood pressure to plummet as well.

Once more, Dorothy had to be admitted into the ICU.

“I kept shivering uncontrollably despite three to four layers of blankets. My lips turned black because I was extremely cold and I had to be put on oxygen.

“But I didn’t ask God for anything. In my heart, I knew I would be healed.”

This time, even though the situation was critical, Dorothy was not afraid. All the lessons God had taught her during her previous medical crisis – to refuse to let fear take hold, to surrender her helplessness to God and boldly receive help – became the scaffolds on which her faith now stood.  

To alleviate her condition, doctors scheduled a surgery to remove some of the kidney stones. The procedure went smoothly.

But the morning after, Dorothy did not regain consciousness as expected.

It was then that doctors told her husband to expect that she would remain in a coma indefinitely.

A heart lesson through the body’s healing

Alone and uncertain, Kenneth called their church friends for prayers and support. Together, they interceded for Dorothy round the clock.

In a testimony he would later give, Kenneth said: “It was very difficult. I wept no matter how hard I tried to hold back. I cried out to wake her, pinch her, pat her, beat her on her thighs.

“There was no response. It was painful, just painful.”

As the prayers flooded in, Kenneth read each of them to Dorothy. He also meditated on Philippians 1:6 and prayed the verse for himself and for his wife.

Dorothy went to a hospital in Malaysia a second time to have kidney stones removed. But she did not wake up from the operation the next day, to Kenneth’s dismay.

Throughout her various medical emergencies, Dorothy’s spiritual family, including her zone pastor Bobby Chaw and his wife Cindy, prayed constantly for her.

After four days, Dorothy emerged from her coma.

“When I woke up, I was very peaceful, extraordinarily happy. I didn’t know I had been in a coma for four days. I told the Lord, ‘I know I was riding on all the prayers.’”

While it was Dorothy God dealt with during her stroke, it was Kenneth God spoke to through the coma.

Said Dorothy: “He saw the whole team praying for him and me. The pastor prayed together with him, and the cell group called him and prayed over the phone for us. That supported him a lot.

“He knew that God would give him the strength to take care of me even if I was in a coma for good.”

Asked if she would have been as sanguine if she had not been healed, Dorothy told Salt&Light: “This journey wasn’t about healing, it was about trusting God completely in His sovereignty.

“I needed to learn to lean on Him and trust His timing. Throughout this time, God was reminding me that without Him, I am nothing (John 15:5). He was teaching me to depend on Him, and to seek Him first above all else.

In hospital the first time, Dorothy had questioned God. “I felt Him answer, ‘Every decision has its consequences.'”

Over the past year she has reflected on what she gained going through this ordeal. 

“Sometimes we make decisions without realising how they may affect us later — like how we manage stress, rest, or take care of our health. I may not fully understand what led to my stroke, but I believe God is using this experience as a way of reminding me to slow down to pay attention to all areas of my life I may have overlooked, including health,” she told Salt&Light.

“Part of the process of God helping us become the best version of ourselves is allowing us to make mistakes, and then helping us learn how to take responsibility and grow through the consequences,” she said.

“He doesn’t waste our pain—He uses it to teach us, shape us, and draw us closer to Him. We can trust that He is guiding us to live more attentively, more faithfully, and more in tune with His purpose.

“For me, healing wasn’t the ultimate goal, discovering His purpose and presence was.”

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