Sick civil servant was counting his last days when cabby responded
to an appeal for help
Mr Tong Ming Ming, 34, was on a tea break during reservist training
in early March when an SMS and a Facebook post by his secondary
school friend Regina Lim caught his eye.
She wrote that a mutual friend's colleague was likely to die within
days if he did not receive a liver transplant. The family was
urgently looking for a living donor who, among other things, had to
weigh 80kg or more. Could anyone please help?
Mr Tong, a big, burly cabby and former police officer, messaged his
old friend immediately to find out more.
The patient, civil servant Toh Lai Keng, 43, from the Ministry of
Home Affairs (MHA), was a colleague of their mutual friend from
their Peicai Secondary School days, Ms Leow Shee Yin.
Within minutes, Mr Tong was on the line with Ms Leow. "She was in
tears, saying the illness was very sudden and that he had a very
young son," recalled Mr Tong.
By then, Mr Toh's wife, Samantha, 40, and brother, Jeffrey, 42, had
failed the tests to be donors.
"Time was running out. I just knew that I had to help," Mr Tong
recalled.
He made that decision on March 11. After four days of tests, checks
and interviews, he underwent a nine-hour operation at the National
University Hospital (NUH) to donate most of his liver to Mr Toh on
March 15.
Today, nearly five months on, both donor and recipient are doing
well.
The Ministry of Health confirmed that this was the first altruistic
liver donation here by an unrelated living donor - someone with no
blood or emotional ties to the patient.
To most people, including the man who received the gift of life,
the genial, soft-spoken bachelor's generosity is beyond
comprehension.
"What can I say? He's a great man," said Mr Toh, his voice tinged
with emotion. "Human beings are selfish. I can't think of anyone
else who would do this for a stranger."
Sudden illness
Before his brush with death in March, Mr Toh, a food-loving father
of a three-year-old son, had no history of liver problems. In fact,
when he first fell ill with high fever and was hospitalised at Tan
Tock Seng Hospital in early March, he thought he had dengue
fever.
But tests showed his liver was failing rapidly. By March 7 - a
Thursday evening - he was transferred to NUH which has liver
transplant facilities. By the following Tuesday, he was in a
coma.
The cause of his liver failure remains unknown. "They told my wife
I had a week to live," said Mr Toh.
It was serendipitous that his colleague, Ms Leow, confided in her
friend Ms Lim about his desperate situation, and that Ms Lim in
turn went on Facebook, and her post touched Mr Tong.
The cabby needed extensive tests and interviews, including one with
an independent ethics committee, to ensure he was psychologically
sound, not coerced and no money had changed hands, before the
operation on March 15. The risks of the procedure were also
explained to him.
"Things just fell in place when Ming Ming came on the scene," said
Mr Toh, a deputy director at MHA. "I guess it was a miracle."
Both men hope their experience will show others that much-needed
organs can come from people who are not friends or family. "With
his kindness and generosity, Ming Ming has shown that even
strangers can step forward to save lives," said Mr Toh.
Since the operation, the men have visited each other at home,
shared meals and are now friends.
They also discovered a long-lost kampung connection - the extended
Toh and Tong families used to live near each other in the Braddell
area when they were children. "It's really unbelievable," marvelled
Mr Toh.
Ask Mr Tong why he stepped forward and he points heavenwards. "It's
a calling," he said with a laugh, referring to his Christian
faith.
But dig deeper and other reasons pour forth.
Having grown up with an absent father, he kept thinking of Mr Toh's
wife and young son, Terence, who could have lost his dad before
even getting to know him.
Also, he was satisfied that the procedure would be safe. "The liver
can grow back, so I will be fine," he said.
"As a cabby, there is probably a greater chance of dying in a road
accident," he added with a laugh.
Friends like Ms Lim and Ms Leow, both 34-year-old mothers who met
Mr Tong in school more than two decades ago, are not surprised by
his large-heartedness.
"When we were urgently looking for a donor, I did not think of Ming
Ming," said Ms Leow. "But in hindsight, if anyone could have done
this, it was him."
She remembers his zeal to help others during the compulsory
community involvement programmes of their schooldays. "Most of us
stopped volunteering after secondary school, but Ming Ming never
gave up. He really, really wants to help others," she said.
A graduate of Temasek Polytechnic, Mr Tong has long been hooked on
helping. As a taxi driver since January, he has ferried amputees
for medical appointments, kidney patients for dialysis and poor
older folk to church.
He said he usually waives the fare, but some regular passengers pay
a token sum.
He has donated blood in response to urgent appeals, helps to clean
homes of the elderly in one- room rental flats in Upper Boon Keng,
and leaves food packets for immobile old people in Chinatown.
"There is a lot of need in Singapore if you know where to look," he
said. "I do what I can to help."
His choice of jobs so far also reflects his passion to do good. As
a boy, he saw police officers coming to his family's three-room
Hougang home when they were harassed by loan sharks. His cabby
father, a gambler, would chalk up huge debts.
"The officers were kind and would protect us. From then on, I
always wanted to be an officer," he said.
He joined the police force after graduation in 1998. He has also
worked in the social service sector, looking after abandoned,
abused and delinquent children.
The youngest of three sons also recalled how his parents and
grandparents were forced to sell their adjacent HDB flats to settle
his father's gambling debts.
His role model is his mother, Madam Neo Teng Huay, 63, who raised
her sons by working 12 hours a day selling curry puffs in a coffee
shop. "She has faced hardship, but is never bitter. She always
helps others."
Mr Tong said that although the family always had food on the table,
his hardscrabble childhood has helped him form lasting bonds with
some of the bruised and broken boys he encountered while working in
youth homes.
Many may think that with so much hardship and suffering, it is
impossible to change the world, but Mr Tong said: "If you can help
even one person in need, you would have done just that."
