Calgary resident Allan Drescher had undergone two surgeries on his back but continued to suffer in pain for several years after.

Tired of waiting for treatment, he sought advice that pointed him to National Healthcare Group on the tiny island-state of Singapore.

Alas, A Life Without Lifts

An active sports enthusiast since youth, Drescher or Al as he is known to his friends, was accustomed to the usual day-after aches and strains. Certainly, that did nothing to stop him from enjoying a game of baseball, softball or volleyball, or challenging the rigours of skiing cross-country.

In 1995 though, things began to change dramatically for the 59-year old father of a supervisor daughter.

“I began to notice that I was aching for progressively longer periods and gradually, the normal body strain would end with lower back pain. As time went by, even after a normal day’s work, I would end up feeling lots of discomfort and pain. I realised then that something was just not right,” relates Drescher, who works in a petrochemical refinery.

It was around that point that he embarked on a hopeful journey to unveil the problem plaguing his back and to look for a solution. X-rays had subsequently found that he had a degenerative disc disease. This was affecting one of his lumbar vertebrae that was compressing against his nerves and causing him pain and difficulty when walking or engaging in any weight-bearing activity.

False Hope

Countless acupuncture and chiropractor visits had not offered any lasting reprieve for him. Finally, in 2002, Drescher’s doctor decided to perform a laminectomy, a surgical procedure to relieve pressure on the spinal cord. Still, the pain remained.

A year later, Drescher had to go under the knife again to clear up what the first operation had failed to achieve. He expected to be finally out of the woods but by 2006, the pain in his back had returned, this time with a vengeance.

Expecting the doctor to investigate and treat him, Drescher was instead left flabbergasted when told he was not eligible for surgery yet since he had only recently had his, and was therefore placed at the lower end of a long waiting list.

In the mean time, he was recommended for physiotherapy, prescribed a cocktail of painkillers and given a shoe with a half-inch lift to help correct the severe limp he had since developed.

When he finally got to consult with the doctor later that year, further despair was to greet the anxious and weary Drescher.

He recalls, “They told me that I would have to wait for 18 months to two years to see a specialist neurologist or orthopaedic surgeon, and if surgery was necessary, I would have to wait a further year for it.”

“No way! I was not going to wait another three years and suffer the pain and side-effects from the drugs they were giving me.”

“It was already so bad that the moment I woke up in the morning, the pain would hit me. As long as I put any weight on my body, I would be cringing in pain. Two blocks was the most I could muster without coming close to collapsing,” he says.

Springboard to a Solution

With hopefulness now replaced by immense frustration and desperation, Drescher turned his attention to finding alternative medical treatment outside of Canada. His search led him to a woman in Calgary who was offering a service that specifically catered to the medical needs of those in the same predicament.

Aruna Th-Hollingshead, a Sri Lankan-born Canadian, runs the Overseas Medical Services (OMS) Canada Inc., a company that helps those seeking medical treatment overseas to find a physician and hospital suited to their specific medical needs.

Besides making arrangements for travel, treatment, accommodation and even after-care once the patient returns home, OMS also provides useful information about the country such as its currency, culture and best shopping and sight-seeing spots – a genuinely ‘all-in-one’ service for the medical traveller.

Th-Hollingshead, who has also sought treatment outside of Canada previously, fully sympathises with Drescher and many others like him who have been left exasperated with the long waiting list for medical treatment back home. Then, there is the high cost of medical care and treatment for those who are not insured.

“I did my research and found that Singapore was ideal for Allan. Besides being an English-speaking country, the facilities were second to none. I knew this was important to him because he had never been out of the region,” Th-Hollingshead reveals.

When Th-Hollingshead suggested a doctor in the National University Hospital (NUH) and showed him the doctor’s credentials which had been provided to her, Drescher was sold.

He exclaims, “I didn’t hesitate. I was impressed with the doctor but more importantly, at that point, I just couldn’t wait any longer. I had enough of long-waiting lines and doctors who were botching things up. I needed some good news and it couldn’t have come any sooner.”

“Thanks to the efficiency of Aruna and the officials at NUH, I was in Singapore about a month later in June this year. I couldn’t wait for it to happen.”

No Fuss Efficiency

On arrival in Singapore, Drescher was taken to NUH where he met his surgeon, Professor Wong Hee Kit, Chief and Senior Consultant of Orthopaedic Surgery.

Professor Wong who already had copies of Drescher’s scans sent to him by Th-Hollingshead was not concerned by the procedure. He was however, mindful of Drescher’s previous surgeries.

He explains, “I decided that freeing the trapped L5 (fifth lumbar vertebrae) nerve root in the neuroforamen was the most appropriate method. However, this was challenging because he previously had two surgeries and the post-surgical changes on the scans and X-rays made their interpretation more difficult.”

The neuroforamen are passageways that are naturally formed on either side between an upper and lower vertebra. In between each vertebra sits an intervertebral disc. It is the height of the disc separating the two vertebrae, which creates the size of the neuroforamen.

In Drescher’s case, due to the degeneration of one of these discs, pressure was exerted on a nerve root causing excruciating lower back pain triggered from the slightest movement.

During the seven-hour surgery, Professor Wong carried out a trans-foraminal lumbar interbody fusion (TLIF) which involved decompressing the neuroforamen and stabilising the affected segment by fusing and instrumenting it with titanium. This is meant to hold the vertebrae together and prevent any recurrence of symptoms.

Drescher had initially wanted to have a disc replacement but Professor Wong advised against it because of the advanced degenerative changes that had already affected the disc and facet joints. Moreover, the two previous laminectomies made disc replacement surgery risky.

A day after surgery, Drescher noticed a distinctive difference.

“Aside from the surgical pain, the back and leg pain I had grown accustomed to was gone. I just couldn’t believe it. I felt a ton of weight lifted from me.”

In a few days, Drescher was walking around. He no longer was limping and neither did he need a lift in his shoe. In fact, with Professor Wong’s blessing, he was out on the Singapore streets, taking in the sights and doing some shopping for his daughter.

“I now understand what it means to have a new lease of life. Professor Wong was so elaborate about what he would be doing. It was no fuss, just straight and clear. That made me feel really confident,” admits Drescher.

A Medical Haven

According to Th-Hollingshead, Singapore is well renowned for its high-quality medical services.

She discloses, “The resumes of Singaporean doctors speak for themselves. They are well-trained in the most important parts of the world and as a motherboard of high-technology, they have the most advanced medical equipment. Also, it is very affordable compared to the Western countries.”

Professor Wong for instance, undertakes around 120 cases similar to Drescher’s. Though the basic steps of the surgery itself are not particularly difficult, says Professor Wong, what is vital besides good magnification and lighting, is the surgical skill necessary to work through and around previous scar tissue that was evident in Drescher's case.

But cost isn’t everything.

Drescher recounts, “I couldn’t sleep properly, lost weight, was all stressed up and missed out on so many activities. Now that is gone so how can I put a price on regaining a quality of life I have dreamed of for the longest time?”

Admittedly, Drescher was initially sceptical about coming to Singapore, a place he had heard of but was not familiar with. He had actually thought it was a third world country with back-alley hospitals. Needless to say, his first-hand experience of its advanced quality of life and first-class infrastructure transformed his impressions.

“If my fellow Canadians know about this place, they will be shocked that such a clean, efficient and friendly city exists all the way over here. Anyone who needs medical treatment should seriously consider Singapore,” he asserts.

Drescher is heading back home to celebrate his new lease of life with his friends and most likely, show off the new bounce in his step again, sans the shoe lifts.

“Maybe I will go dancing soon but for now, I just want to enjoy waking up, walking and working without any pain.”