http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC8lJyxOZvA
I include his testimony below, and it's a pertinent time, to re-assess that in our remaining days, let us ask if we are only concerned about things of this world, or look to what we can do for others, and live our lives well.
Below is the transcript of the talk of Dr. Richard Teo, who
is a 40-year-old millionaire and cosmetic surgeon with a stage-4 lung cancer but
selflessly came to share with the D1 class his life experience on
19-Jan-2012.
Hi good morning to all of you.
My voice is a bit hoarse, so please bear with me. I thought
I’ll just introduce myself. My name is Richard, I’m a medical doctor. And I
thought I’ll just share some thoughts of my life. It’s my pleasure to be invited
by prof. Hopefully, it can get you thinking about how… as you pursue this..
embarking on your training to become dental surgeons, to think about other
things as well.
Since young, I am a typical product of today’s society.
Relatively successful product that society requires.. From young, I came from a
below average family. I was told by the media… and people around me that
happiness is about success. And that success is about being wealthy. With this
mind-set, I’ve always be extremely competitive, since I was
young.
Not only do I need to go to the top school, I need to have
success in all fields. Uniform groups, track, everything. I needed to get
trophies, needed to be successful, I needed to have colours award, national
colours award, everything. So I was highly competitive since young. I went on to
medical school, graduated as a doctor. Some of you may know that within the
medical faculty, ophthalmology is one of the most highly sought after
specialities. So I went after that as well. I was given a traineeship in
ophthalmology, I was also given a research scholarship by NUS to develop lasers
to treat the eye.
So in the process, I was given 2 patents, one for the medical
devices, and another for the lasers. And you know what, all this academic
achievements did not bring me any wealth. So once I completed my bond with MOH,
I decided that this is taking too long, the training in eye surgery is just
taking too long. And there’s lots of money to be made in the private sector. If
you’re aware, in the last few years, there is this rise in aesthetic medicine.
Tons of money to be made there. So I decided, well, enough of staying in
institution, it’s time to leave. So I quit my training halfway and I went on to
set up my aesthetic clinic… in town, together with a day surgery
centre.
You know the irony is that people do not make heroes out
average GP (general practitioner), family physicians. They don’t. They make
heroes out of people who are rich and famous. People who are not happy to pay
$20 to see a GP, the same person have no qualms paying ten thousand dollars for
a liposuction, 15 thousand dollars for a breast augmentation, and so on and so
forth. So it’s a no brainer isn’t? Why do you want to be a gp? Become an
aesthetic physician. So instead of healing the sick and ill, I decided that I’ll
become a glorified beautician. So, business was good, very good. It started off
with waiting of one week, then became 3 weeks, then one month, then 2 months,
then 3 months. I was overwhelmed; there were just too many patients. Vanities
are fantastic business. I employed one doctor, the second doctor, the 3rd
doctor, the 4th doctor. And within the 1st year, we’re already raking in
millions. Just the 1st year. But never is enough because I was so obsessed with
it. I started to expand into Indonesia to get all the rich Indonesian tai-tais
who wouldn’t blink an eye to have a procedure done. So life was really
good.
So what do I do with the spare cash. How do I spend my
weekends? Typically, I’ll have car club gatherings. I take out my track car,
with spare cash I got myself a track car. We have car club gatherings. We’ll go
up to Sepang in Malaysia. We’ll go for car racing. And it was my life. With
other spare cash, what do i do? I get myself a Ferrari. At that time, the 458
wasn’t out, it’s just a spider convertible, 430. This is a friend of mine, a
schoolmate who is a forex trader, a banker. So he got a red one, he was wanting
all along a red one, I was getting the silver one.
So what do I do after getting a car? It’s time to buy a
house, to build our own bungalows. So we go around looking for a land to build
our own bungalows, we went around hunting. So how do i live my life? Well, we
all think we have to mix around with the rich and famous. This is one of the
Miss Universe. So we hang around with the beautiful, rich and famous. This by
the way is an internet founder. So this is how we spend our lives, with dining
and all the restaurants and Michelin Chefs you know.
So I reach a point in life that I got everything for my life.
I was at the pinnacle of my career and all. That’s me one year ago in the gym
and I thought I was like, having everything under control and reaching the
pinnacle.
Well, I was wrong. I didn’t have everything under control.
About last year March, I started to develop backache in the middle of nowhere. I
thought maybe it was all the heavy squats I was doing. So I went to SGH, saw my
classmate to do an MRI, to make sure it’s not a slipped disc or anything. And
that evening, he called me up and said that we found bone marrow replacement in
your spine. I said, sorry what does that mean? I mean I know what it means, but
I couldn’t accept that. I was like “Are you serious?” I was still running around
going to the gym you know. But we had more scans the next day, PET scans –
positrons emission scans, they found that actually I have stage 4 terminal lung
cancer. I was like “Whoa where did that come from?” It has already spread to the
brain, the spine, the liver and the adrenals. And you know one moment I was
there, totally thinking that I have everything under control, thinking that I’ve
reached the pinnacle of my life. But the next moment, I have just lost
it.
This is a CT scan of the lungs itself. If you look at it,
every single dot there is a tumour. We call this miliaries tumour. And in fact,
I have tens of thousands of them in the lungs. So, I was told that even with
chemotherapy, that I’ll have about 3-4months at most. Did my life come crushing
on, of course it did, who wouldn’t? I went into depression, of course, severe
depression and I thought I had everything.
See the irony is that all these things that I have, the
success, the trophies, my cars, my house and all. I thought that brought me
happiness. But i was feeling really down, having severe depression. Having all
these thoughts of my possessions, they brought me no joy. The thought of… You
know, I can hug my Ferrari to sleep, no… No, it is not going to happen. It
brought not a single comfort during my last ten months. And I thought they were,
but they were not true happiness. But it wasn’t. What really brought me joy in
the last ten months was interaction with people, my loved ones, friends, people
who genuinely care about me, they laugh and cry with me, and they are able to
identify the pain and suffering I was going through. That brought joy to me,
happiness. None of the things I have, all the possessions, and I thought those
were supposed to bring me happiness. But it didn’t, because if it did, I would
have felt happy think about it, when I was feeling most
down..
You know the classical Chinese New Year that is coming up. In
the past, what do I do? Well, I will usually drive my flashy car to do my
rounds, visit my relatives, to show it off to my friends. And I thought that was
joy, you know. I thought that was really joy. But do you really think that my
relatives and friends, whom some of them have difficulty trying to make ends
meet, that will truly share the joy with me? Seeing me driving my flashy car and
showing off to them? No, no way. They won’t be sharing joy with me. They were
having problems trying to make ends meet, taking public transport. In fact i
think, what I have done is more like you know, making them envious, jealous of
all I have. In fact, sometimes even hatred.
Those are what we call objects of envy. I have them, I show
them off to them and I feel it can fill my own pride and ego. That didn’t bring
any joy to these people, to my friends and relatives, and I thought they were
real joy.
Well, let me just share another story with you. You know when
I was about your age, I stayed in king Edward VII hall. I had this friend whom I
thought was strange. Her name is Jennifer, we’re still good friends. And as I
walk along the path, she would, if she sees a snail, she would actually pick up
the snail and put it along the grass patch. I was like why do you need to do
that? Why dirty your hands? It’s just a snail. The truth is she could feel for
the snail. The thought of being crushed to death is real to her, but to me it’s
just a snail. If you can’t get out of the pathway of humans then you deserve to
be crushed, it’s part of evolution isn’t it? What an irony isn’t
it?
There I was being trained as a doctor, to be compassionate,
to be able to empathise; but I couldn’t. As a house officer, I graduated from
medical school, posted to the oncology department at NUH. And, every day, every
other day I witness death in the cancer department. When I see how they
suffered, I see all the pain they went through. I see all the morphine they have
to press every few minutes just to relieve their pain. I see them struggling
with their oxygen breathing their last breath and all. But it was just a job.
When I went to clinic every day, to the wards every day, take blood, give the
medication but was the patient real to me? They weren’t real to me. It was just
a job, I do it, I get out of the ward, I can’t wait to get home, I do my own
stuff.
Was the pain, was the suffering the patients went through
real? No. Of course I know all the medical terms to describe how they feel, all
the suffering they went through. But in truth, I did not know how they feel, not
until I became a patient. It is until now; I truly understand how they feel.
And, if you ask me, would I have been a very different doctor if I were to
re-live my life now, I can tell you yes I will. Because I truly understand how
the patients feel now. And sometimes, you have to learn it the hard
way.
Even as you start just your first year, and you embark this
journey to become dental surgeons, let me just challenge you on two
fronts.
Inevitably, all of you here will start to go into private
practice. You will start to accumulate wealth. I can guarantee you. Just doing
an implant can bring you thousands of dollars, it’s fantastic money. And
actually there is nothing wrong with being successful, with being rich or
wealthy, absolutely nothing wrong. The only trouble is that a lot of us like
myself couldn’t handle it.
Why do I say that? Because when I start to accumulate, the
more I have, the more I want. The more I wanted, the more obsessed I became.
Like what I showed you earlier on, all I can was basically to get more
possessions, to reach the pinnacle of what society did to us, of what society
wants us to be. I became so obsessed that nothing else really mattered to me.
Patients were just a source of income, and I tried to squeeze every single cent
out of these patients.
A lot of times we forget, whom we are supposed to be serving.
We become so lost that we serve nobody else but just ourselves. That was what
happened to me. Whether it is in the medical, the dental fraternity, I can tell
you, right now in the private practice, sometimes we just advise patients on
treatment that is not indicated. Grey areas. And even though it is not
necessary, we kind of advocate it. Even at this point, I know who are my friends
and who genuinely cared for me and who are the ones who try to make money out of
me by selling me “hope”. We kind of lose our moral compass along the way.
Because we just want to make money.
Worse, I can tell you, over the last few years, we bad mouth
our fellow colleagues, our fellow competitors in the industry. We have no qualms
about it. So if we can put them down to give ourselves an advantage, we do it.
And that’s what happening right now, medical, dental everywhere. My challenge to
you is not to lose that moral compass. I learnt it the hard way, I hope you
don’t ever have to do it.
Secondly, a lot of us will start to get numb to our patients
as we start to practise. Whether is it government hospitals, private practice, I
can tell you when I was in the hospital, with stacks of patient folders, I can’t
wait to get rid of those folders as soon as possible; I can’t wait to get
patients out of my consultation room as soon as possible because there is just
so many, and that’s a reality. Because it becomes a job, a very routine job. And
this is just part of it. Do I truly know how the patient feels back then? No, I
don’t. The fears and anxiety and all, do I truly understand what they are going
through? I don’t, not until when this happens to me and I think that is one of
the biggest flaws in our system.
We’re being trained to be healthcare providers, professional,
and all and yet we don’t know how exactly they feel. I’m not asking you to get
involved emotionally, I don’t think that is professional but do we actually make
a real effort to understand their pain and all? Most of us won’t, alright, I can
assure you. So don’t lose it, my challenge to you is to always be able to put
yourself in your patient’s shoes.
Because the pain, the anxiety, the fear are very real even
though it’s not real to you, it’s real to them. So don’t lose it and you know,
right now I’m in the midst of my 5th cycle of my chemotherapy. I can tell you
it’s a terrible feeling. Chemotherapy is one of those things that you don’t wish
even your enemies to go through because it’s just suffering, lousy feeling,
throwing out, you don’t even know if you can retain your meals or not. Terrible
feeling! And even with whatever little energy now I have, I try to reach out to
other cancer patients because I truly understand what pain and suffering is
like. But it’s kind of little too late and too little.
You guys have a bright future ahead of you with all the
resource and energy, so I’m going to challenge you to go beyond your immediate
patients. To understand that there are people out there who are truly in pain,
truly in hardship. Don’t get the idea that only poor people suffer. It is not
true. A lot of these poor people do not have much in the first place, they are
easily contented. for all you know they are happier than you and me but there
are out there, people who are suffering mentally, physically, hardship,
emotionally, financially and so on and so forth, and they are real. We choose to
ignore them or we just don’t want to know that they exist.
So do think about it alright, even as you go on to become
professionals and dental surgeons and all. That you can reach out to these
people who are in need. Whatever you do can make a large difference to them. I’m
now at the receiving end so I know how it feels, someone who genuinely care for
you, encourage and all. It makes a lot of difference to me. That’s what happens
after treatment. I had a treatment recently, but I’ll leave this for another
day. A lot of things happened along the way, that’s why I am still able to talk
to you today.
I’ll just end of with this quote here, it’s from this book
called Tuesdays with Morris, and some of you may have read it. Everyone knows
that they are going to die; every one of us knows that. The truth is, none of us
believe it because if we did, we will do things differently. When I faced death,
when I had to, I stripped myself off all stuff totally and I focused only on
what is essential. The irony is that a lot of times, only when we learn how to
die then we learn how to live. I know it sounds very morbid for this morning but
it’s the truth, this is what I’m going through.
Don’t let society tell you how to live. Don’t let the media
tell you what you’re supposed to do. Those things happened to me. And I led this
life thinking that these are going to bring me happiness. I hope that you will
think about it and decide for yourself how you want to live your own life. Not
according to what other people tell you to do, and you have to decide whether
you want to serve yourself, whether you are going to make a difference in
somebody else’s life. Because true happiness doesn’t come from serving yourself.
I thought it was but it didn’t turn out that way. With that I thank you, if you
have any questions you have for me, please feel free. Thank
you.