The last thing Chang Kee Tong remembered before they sedated him was a conversation two doctors had. One looked at the other and said: “Not much hope.”

In December 2023, as the COVID pandemic was waning, Kee Tong, then 69, started to feel feverish. He thought nothing of it because he had always been healthy.

“I exercise regular. I do brisk walking – 2 to 3km, no problem. And I don’t fall sick easily.”

Kee Tong with his granddaughters before his Covid journey.

But when he took the Antigen Rapid Test, two lines appeared. He had COVID. Because he was also feeling weak, his son, Qing Yuan brought him to the A&E, and he was sent home with medication.

Over the next few days, Kee Tong’s fever persisted and he became breathless. This time Qing Yuan took him to Tan Tock Seng Hospital where he was immediately placed at an isolation ward at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases.

“I didn’t expect it to be so serious,” he told Salt&Light.

Prepare for the worst

Kee Tong was later moved to a high dependency ward, one step below the ICU. Over the next few days, however, his condition improved so much that he was moved to a regular ward. But two nights later, his daughter Su-Fern, then 36, received a call from the hospital.

(Left to right) Su-Fern and her father Kee Tong. Su-Fern and her brother took turns to be by their father’s side throughout his hospital stay.

She said: “They told me my dad’s O₂ level was dropping and they needed to intubate him immediately.

“They said, ‘If you can, come down now because once we intubate him, you cannot talk to him anymore.’”

Su-Fern and Qing Yuan rushed to the hospital. This was the worst-case scenario the doctors had warned them about. Kee Tong was experiencing a cytokine storm – his immune system was overreacting and was damaging his body’s own tissues.

After Kee Tong was wheeled into the ICU, the doctor told his family to prepare for the worst. The medical team had cranked up the ventilator to give Kee Tong 100% of oxygen, but his lungs were so damaged that they were not able take it all in. His blood oxygen saturation (SpO₂), which was how much oxygen was in his blood, remained dangerously low.   

Just as they thought Kee Tong was recovering from Covid, his condition took a turn for the worst.

“My brother and I cried. It was 4am. So we couldn’t call anyone. We didn’t know what to do.

“The only thing we could do was pray,” said Su-Fern who became a Christian as a child, along with her whole family, when her aunt brought them to Church of Our Saviour (COOS).

Kee Tong pulled through the night. This was the first miracle.

95% damage in the lungs   

But Kee Tong was nowhere near being in the clear. While sedated, he continued to show signs of discomfort from the intubation. So doctors put him in an induced coma for his comfort and to allow his body time to rest.

Kee Tong himself has no memory of any of it.

He said: “Later when I recovered, they showed me a photo of myself. I was shocked. I told myself: ‘Wow, I went through all this. This is incredible!'”

About 95% of his lungs were scarred, but the back of his lungs were less damaged. So the doctors flipped him face down for 10 to 12 hours each day so he could better absorb the oxygen. This put tremendous pressure on his face which started to swell with water retention. His eyeballs also began “popping out”.

Kee Tong was put in an induced coma to spare him the discomfort of being intubated.

“At one point, his eyeballs swelled to the point his eyelids could not close. They had to tape his eyes shut. His eyes were also bloodshot from the pressure,” Su-Fern recounted to Salt&Light.

Kee Tong ran the risk of becoming blind, but the medical team’s first concern was saving his life.

One thing after another

Being hospitalised for weeks exposed Kee Tong to a host of infections. Though he was isolated, his immunity was so weak it had no ability to protect him against even the most benign of pathogens. He came down with different versions of pneumonia.

“His condition was up and down. He would get better, then he would catch something else,” Su-Fern recalled. “Until the ICU doctor held a family meeting with us and told us that it was like a bad movie that had no ending.”.

All this time, Qing Yuan and Su-Fern took turns being by their father’s side. It was while by his bedside one day that Su-Fern noticed that Kee Tong’s head was jerking.

“He was in an induced coma. He was not supposed to move at all.”

The probable cause was a stroke. But there was no way he could go through an MRI or CT scan to confirm this because he was too ill to be moved. Much later, they did have Kee Tong scanned. He had, indeed, suffered minor bleeds in several parts of his brain. It was a stroke.

Said Su-Fern: “Even if anything happened, they could not operate on him. He was too weak.

“So if he didn’t die from a lung infection, it might be something else. It could be a heart attack because he had suffered one before. He had a stent in his heart.”

The prognosis was bad. Because of the stroke, even if Kee Tong came out of the coma, he was likely to be in a vegetative state. He would probably require help breathing and would never be able to walk again.

Meanwhile, his kidneys were also severely damaged from the strong medication he had been given and he required dialysis.

The breakthrough

As Kee Tong’s condition declined, his family wondered, at times, if they should “let him go” because they did not want him to suffer more.

Almost two months into his ICU stay, they were called down to “spend their last moments” with Kee Tong.

Said Su-Fern: “We told God, ‘Lord, Your will be done. If You let him go through such an ordeal, surely You have a plan and a purpose.’”

Kee Tong pulled through once more. Meanwhile, Su-Fern persisted in prayer. Every time she was with her father, she read the Bible to him and “spoke verses into his spirit man”. Psalm 91, especially verse 7, was particularly meaningful to her.

Su-Fern not only read Bible verses to her father while he was in a coma, she wrote the verses down on a white board by his bed as well.

“It felt like everything was against us, like we were at war both medically and spiritually. Holding onto God’s promises that He has given us life and He will go before us, He is our Jehovah Rapha helped.

“We trusted in who God is, in His character. He loves us. His plans for us are always for good.”

When Kee Tong was eventually brought out of his induced coma, he would find the white board by his bed full of Bible verses his daughter had written down.

Family, church leaders and cell group members also prayed for him. Their Pastors came to anoint Kee Tong with oil.

“There was no breakthrough,” said Su-Fern.

Then a family friend suggested that they hold a session to break possible spiritual strongholds in Kee Tong’s life. Together as a family, they renounced all sins, broke spiritual bondages and cleansed the house.

“We spent the whole evening and ended with a beautiful night of worship. It was a very memorable night,” said Su-Fern.

She maintained that that was the turning point because, from then on, Kee Tong slowly but surely recovered.

Awake but weak

Kee Tong started to meet the medical milestones the doctors set to measure his progress, one by one. By then, he had been in the ICU for nearly two months.

The first thing Kee Tong remembered when he regained consciousness was looking at the ceiling. He had no idea how much he had gone through nor how long he had been hospitalised.

“It seemed like just the other day that I was walking 2km every day. Today, I can’t move my body, not to the right nor to the left. Why is this happening to me?” he said.

Kee Tong well enough to play the ukulele.

For the next month and a half, he would lie in bed like this.

“Until I had bedsores. It was very painful. To ease my bedsores, I had to press the button to get the nurse to move me to my side.

“I had zero strength. I couldn’t even lift my hand,” he told Salt&Light.

The helplessness pulled Kee Tong into depression. He also suffered from nightmares and hallucinations – withdrawal symptoms from being taken off strong sedatives.

“I dreamt of huge monsters camouflaged in the mountain where I was. And I saw a figure of a man wearing a hat staring at the ward next door. One night, I heard a lot of low moaning sounds like someone mourning,” said Kee Tong.

“I called to God to protect me and hummed worship songs continuously until I slept. The peace I had was because God comforted me.” 

Things got so bad that there was a moment when Kee Tong started to think about his own funeral. At that point, he heard a “thunderous voice in (his) head”.

“The Voice said, ‘Hey! Hang on! It’s not time. I am in charge here. I heard your prayers and on this I will deliver you. But now I have given you a second chance to put things in order. You are not done yet.”

Live to tell

Asked what helped in the months it took to get back on his feet, Kee Tong credited the support of his family, the caring medical team and his faith.

“I looked to Jesus. I would tell Jesus, ‘I would love to see my grandchildren grow up. They are only five and three.’

When he was very ill, Kee Tong asked God for more time with his grandchildren.

“I always remember this verse, ‘If God is for me, who can be against me?’ (Romans 8:31). And ‘He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty’ (Psalm 91:1).

“When you meditate on the Word long enough, the fear goes. You feel comfort. You feel at peace. I was prepared to go.”

Clinging to his faith helped Kee Tong through.

Kee Tong was discharged after 86 days in ICU. He spent another two months at Tan Tock Seng Integrated Care Hub undergoing physiotherapy. Nearly three months in bed had caused him to lose muscle mass. During that time, he was also tube-fed. He had to learn to walk and eat again.

Kee Tong is thankful to his medical team for their excellent care throughout his hospitalisation.

That he could breathe, walk and eat on his own at all was a miracle of no small proportion, given the fact that 95% of his lungs are damaged.

Said Kee Tong: “When I got COVID and came out alive, God became so real to me. I can testify that God is real. He saved me to give this testimony that He is real.”

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