Singaporean woman crowdfunds to bring father home

SINGAPORE: What was meant to be a family trip marking the end of a difficult period took a turn for the worse for Eileen Cheong last week. 

Her family had arrived in Tokyo, Japan on Apr 19 to celebrate after her mother’s cancer was declared to be in remission. Just as their trip was about to start, her father suffered a cardiac arrest and was admitted into a local hospital. 

In a heartfelt appeal posted on crowdfunding portal Give.Asia on Friday (Apr 28), 25-year-old Eileen explained that she had turned to the platform as she had “exhausted all resources”. Her father’s medical bills were rising “exponentially”, she said, adding that his first night in hospital alone cost S$40,000, and every subsequent night in the ICU would be an additional S$10,000.

“We were told that his heart was beating irregularly and stopped for an extended period of time, causing his brain to suffer permanent damage,” she wrote. “According to the Japanese doctors, it is impossible to determine how long my dad will remain comatose. It could be a week, a year, or forever.”

“We are now one week into his hospitalisation and owe the hospital approximately S$120,000 (and counting),” she said. 

Eileen said her father does not hold a life insurance policy. His travel insurers also said the Cheong family is unlikely to have a successful claim as his collapse was due to a pre-existing heart condition. 

Besides escalating medical costs, Eileen said they hope to take her father home to Singapore, where her family will have access to subsidised healthcare and financial aid, as well as emotional support from their loved ones. This would however add to their bills, as medical evacuation could cost an additional S$120,000. 

Thanks to kind netizens however, things could be looking up for the Cheong family – their S$250,000 target was hit on Saturday afternoon, after nearly 3,000 people sent in donations online, and privately, to the family. The crowdfunding page had been down intermittently since Friday due to heavy traffic to the site. 

The campaign has since ended. In an update on Saturday, Eileen said her family is in the midst of arranging for her father’s air evacuation back to Singapore, as he is currently in a stable condition. 

“We did not expect to raise the sums in such a short amount of time (for which we are truly grateful), and we are also very thankful to the friends, my ex-schools and the companies that have reached out to offer us advice and help (be it financial, or arrangements for the medical evacuation),” she said.

“Without your help, we would never have raised this amount in such a short period of time. In particular, this would not have been possible without my friends, who had put forth the idea of and continually persuaded me to crowdfund for this cause despite my initial reluctance.”