Ms Stephanie Lim reportedly suffered a stroke three months ago while she was pregnant with her fourth child.
She recalled that she was at a foodcourt when all of a sudden she couldn't hear anything, followed by her collapsing.
The former marketing and business executive had gone to the gynaecologist for a routine check-up and was given a clean bill of health earlier that day. It was reported that her pregnancy was also normal up to that incident.
Her husband, Mr Christopher Goh immediately rushed her to the National University Hospital (NUH) where doctors found that she had a subarachnoid haemorrhage, although they did not know what had triggered it.
Subarachnoid haemorrhage is a type of stroke where a blood vessel in the brain bursts, leaking blood into the space around the brain.
43-year-old Mr Goh said: "There were two teams of doctors so that we could save both lives, one was to take out the baby because they couldn't give her medicine with the baby still in there."
In the end, an emergency caesarean had to be performed to save their daughter before Ms Lim underwent surgery to relieve the pressure on her brain.
She was in coma for two weeks and Mr Goh was informed by the doctors that she had only a 5% chance of survival.
Ms Lim's first thought when she saw her new daughter was how small the baby was.
"She was so tiny," recalled Ms Lim. "She was put in the incubator because she was premature."
However, the first meeting only lasted for 5 minutes as doctors feared that the baby would be exposed to potential infectious diseases in the high-dependency ward that Ms Lim was in at the time.
Ms Lim was discharged from the hospital after nearly four months and currently is has rehabilitation at Ren Ci Hospital. She also makes it a point to visit the Stroke Support Station in Redhill thrice a week to interact with other stroke survivors.
She also had to be tube-fed and could not drink water without adding a thickener to prevent her from choking.
Now however, she can take solid food and drink water like a regular person.
Currently, the left half of her body remains weak and she has to use a wheelchair to get around.
Additionally, because of Ms Lim's condition, her parents-in-law are taking care of her youngest child. Her three older children are 12, 13, and 14 years old.
Even when they go out for family meals, it proved to be a challenge because they have to find places with ramps for her wheelchair. Currently, Ms Lim has started taking public transport to the Stroke Support Station - a journey which requires her to change trains at least twice.
"Being positive goes a long way," Ms Lim said. "You can't change what has happened. You just have to go forward."
Source: The Straits Times
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