Dedicated to the memory of Dr Harold Chan Wah Kim (1931 – 2009)

My father had not wanted to be a doctor, his dream was to be an engineer. But the scholarship he received was for the University of Malaya, which at the time had just three faculties, Arts, Science and Medicine. Making the most of limited choices was something he was used to doing since childhood. His was a generation that had to survive WWII and the Japanese Occupation: it was an era in which you had to grow up fast and learn to adapt. He could not afford to go overseas, so Medicine was a practical choice.

He studied at what is now known as the COMB or College of Medicine Building (named for King Edward VII Medical College) on Outram Road. The faculty hailed mainly from the UK or Ireland, and eccentric behaviour seemed quite common. Pa recalled one lecturer who was so erratic, he sometimes abruptly left midway through the class; rumour had it his subsequent early retirement was due to tertiary syphilis. But this professor was also a skilled pilot and would take my father up in a bi-plane so that he could put his aerial photography skills to the test.

He graduated in 1956 with a Gold Medal in Surgery and got married the same year. For a few years, my parents lived in staff quarters near the General Hospital or GH (where the Cantonment Police Station now stands), which was convenient as working hours were long. As a junior doctor in Surgical Professorial Unit at GH, he was able to learn from the best in the field, in particular the late Professor Yeoh Ghim Seng, as well as others who were also pioneers in their field.

The post-war years in Singapore were turbulent, with racial tensions, labour unrest, and gang troubles. During the Hock Lee Bus Riots, my father did not go home for a few days because of curfews. He told us stories of how the injured were literally lining the corridors of GH, and how Prof Yeoh would perform what we now call triage. Quickly assessing each victim, he would order for this one to go to operating theatre, that one could wait, or another could not be saved.

A decade later, on 10 March 1965, my father was giving anaesthesia to a patient in a dental clinic upstairs in MacDonald House, when a bomb went off in the stairwell. He had to help carry the still sleeping patient down the stairs and then proceeded to tend to the injured, putting them into passing cars to be ferried to hospital.

After he failed the first part of the Surgical specialty exam, it was Prof Yeoh who advised him to do anaesthesia, not least because he could still spend time in the operating theatre. Pa took to it very quickly, and with the help and support of Australian anaesthetist friends (who would come to Singapore to teach and hold conjoint examinations) he went to Melbourne and became the first foreigner to obtain the Australian fellowship FFRACS (now known as FANZCA).

My father is at the back in the middle.

He was also the first anaesthetist to go into private practice, and one of the first specialists to sign up with Mount Alvernia Hospital. He even built his own portable anaesthetic machine with valves and flow gauges, which he used for dental anaesthesia. He trained in the era where ether was an anaesthetic agent, and as a child I did not know that it was not normal to have bottles of ether in the cupboard at home. Neither was it normal to have SOXAL (the medical air company) deliver cylinders of oxygen and nitrous oxide (laughing gas) to our garage, but that is a story for another day.

Growing up, I remember my father worked hard. He put in long days but always tried to be home for dinner with the family. Sometimes the telephone would ring in the middle of the night, and I would hear the front door slam as he dashed out to attend to an urgent case (usually an obstetric one). But he would always find time to encourage us in our pastimes and hobbies, especially sports. He himself had diverse interests, including gardening, golf (he was a regular in the Singapore Medical Association golf tournaments), music, photography, food and wine, walking sticks, old Chinese porcelain and furniture. He loved to tinker and DIY, and had a workshop with a self-equipped dry room (for his cameras) which could be converted into a dark room to develop photographs.

When I was in my first year of medical school in the UK, my father was diagnosed with an expanding thoracic aortic aneurysm (a ballooning of the main artery from the heart). He was a walking time bomb, as the thin-walled aneurysm could burst at any time. Singapore did not have the expertise nor facilities to manage a case like this, so on the advice of Dr NK Yong, he and my mother flew to the Cleveland Clinic in US, to seek treatment by Dr Floyd Loop.

The surgery was successful but my father suffered a known complication of the procedure, which was paralysis. He had to be medi-evacuated back to Singapore and it was two years before he could walk again. With grit and determination, he was gradually able to return to work, driving and a little golf. All this time I was wondering if I would have to disrupt my university plans, but was told not to worry. It was not until years later that I learnt that his colleagues and friends had stepped forward with financial support and promised him that no matter what, I would be able to complete my medical studies.

The man squatting with back to camera is my father.

When I reflect on the kind of doctor and the man my father was, it is with the understanding that his life and times, and therefore his medical practice, are so very different from mine. For someone who did not want to study Medicine, he certainly made a good job of it. He worked hard to keep himself updated and was very good at his craft; many mothers who had been anaesthetised by him for their first deliveries would request for him to attend their subsequent ones.

I do not think, though, that work was his whole identity. Rather, to borrow from Kahlil Gibran, work for him was “love made visible”. His work fulfilled his need for intellectual and technical challenge, afforded him a comfortable lifestyle, allowed him to look after his family and to pursue his many interests. He even found time to join the RVNR or Royal Volunteer Naval Reserve in the early 1960s. We still have his appointment letter signed by the Yang Di-Pertuan Negara Yusof Ishak.

He tried to help me decide on specialty training by introducing me to friends (including a few with senior positions in the Ministry of Health), and if he was puzzled by my final choice, he did not say so. When I announced that I intended to pursue Palliative Medicine training in Australia, the only question he asked was “Come back got job or not?”. When he saw how determined I was, he proceeded to ask his Australian friends to help with testimonials to support my application.

I am lucky to have had many choices and opportunities that were not open to him. What I learnt from him was to be curious about the world, to always do things to the best of one’s ability, to be adventurous and learn to roll with the punches. He would always say “try first! You won’t know until you try”, good advice not just for anyone in the healthcare profession, but for everyone.