Alexis Dang delves deeper into the health scare that changed her life in new interview

Independent Singapore

5 days ago

FB screengrab/ Alexis Dang
SINGAPORE: Alexis Dang, who contested under the Worker's Party (WP) banner in the May 3 polls and was one of the candidates who received a lot of attention from Singaporeans, talked at greater length on the health scare that changed her life last year in a Jul 13 interview in the luxury lifestyle publication August Man.
Ms Dang, 39, together with the WP candidates, did very well in the General Election at Punggol GRC, but the ruling party slate headed by Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong proved to be too formidable an opponent.
Her life leading a group of business development professionals has gone back to normal, and on Jun 25, the WP team at Punggol had gone back on the ground, although this is no guarantee that she will contest again the next time the elections come around.
Ms Dang had first talked about her health scare in late April, after she had been announced as a candidate, but went into depth about it in the August Man interview.
In April 2024, she went for a regular check-up, which showed that she had high levels of CA 19-9, a tumour marker. This meant a strong chance that Ms Dang might have pancreatic cancer.
This type of cancer is very often incurable, especially because by the time it is detected, it's too late for it to be addressed with surgery, and even with an operation, there's still a chance of the cancer's recurrence.
Little wonder, then, that Ms Dang 'freaked out,' as she said in the interview. After a second blood test showed even higher levels, she went for a CT scan. The results of the scan were scheduled to come out at 4:30 p.m. on the same day, and the hours when she did not hear from her doctors were the scariest in her life, she said in the interview.
Luckily, everything turned out well. To make a long story short, further testing revealed that a bacterial infection was responsible for her high levels of CA 19-9, which was fortunately treatable with antibiotics.
While there appear to be no lasting effects on her health, her life was changed forever.
'After the health scare, I started thinking about the meaning of life and why we are here. The messaging might be different across different spiritual philosophies, but they all return to the same message… that it's important to be who you are and to follow your highest excitement, which means taking actions based on what brings you the most joy, passion, and enthusiasm. There is no objective reality, in the sense that you apply your perspective to any life event,' she told August Man. /TISG
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