It was supposed to be a restful weekend staycation.

But at 3am on December 3, 2021, Andrew Chew heard a loud thud. He awoke to find his wife Chui Yun lying on the cold, hard floor of the hotel room, blood coming out of her ears.

It was not the first time she had fallen, but the severity of her state immobilised him.

Despite being a former medic with frontline experience in emergency rescue efforts such as the SilkAir MI185 crash, Andrew froze, unable to do anything except to call for an ambulance and to pray.

“I don’t know why I did not perform any checks or resuscitation efforts on her. All I could do was to wait for the ambulance to arrive and pray to God to help us. My wife had slipped into unconsciousness by then,” Andrew, now 50, told Salt&Light.

In 2019, Andrew (with his wife Chui Yun beside him) was awarded a token of appreciation at an SAF ceremony for his years of being a senior medic.

By the time the ambulance arrived on the scene, his wife’s pupils were dilated. Pupil dilation after a fall signals likely brain injury.

Andrew’s panic heightened so much he did not even have the presence of mind to warn the medics that the stretcher would not be able to fit into the lift. They had to carry her down via the staircase.

By the time she was rushed into the hospital’s Accident & Emergency nearly an hour later, the doctor told Andrew it was highly likely that she would not survive. Too much time had lapsed and her vital signs had become unstable.

Chui Yun had broken the right side of her skull and there was massive bleeding in her brain. She was wheeled into surgery to have the bleeding stopped and the broken pieces of her skull removed.

“We’ll have to see when your God wakes her up” 

After the surgery, the doctor told Andrew that his wife had sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. Her rating on the Glasgow Coma Scale, which is used to measure how conscious a person is, was at the highest level, 3.

She was in a coma and no one, not even the doctor, could predict when she would regain consciousness.

“We’ll have to see when your God wakes her up. It could take months or years,” the surgeon told Andrew.

Studies have shown that the mortality rate in such cases is very high, even approaching 100 per cent in the presence of fixed and dilated pupils in some instances.

In the face of such a dire prognosis, the surgeon only had one question for Andrew: “If her condition gets worse, do you want to let her go?”

Andrew replied: “Do your best to save her. I believe she will wake up.”

Chui Yun in a coma in hospital.

He grabbed Chui Yun’s hand as she laid in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and prayed desperate prayers to God.

“Given the fact that she did not die and was not brain dead despite the circumstances, I felt God had answered my prayers. So, I continued to pray and have hope,” he told Salt&Light.

He also once slipped into a coma after a fall

Andrew’s introduction to Christianity was when a neighbour brought him to church.

At the time, his family was poor and he was drawn by the perks the church offered: Free food and entertainment and a conducive study area.

When he was nine years old, a miracle led Andrew to genuinely believe in Jesus and get baptised.

“I had a fall and went into a coma. I don’t know how long I was in the coma but I knew when I woke up, I was a very different person,” he recounted.

After that, he found that he had much better memory and could pass his tests despite not studying for them.

“I also began to see things differently from others, and had ideas and strategies to problems that helped me succeed later in my career as a medic and in business. I felt God saved me and gave me all these gifts,” said Andrew.

However, he stopped going to church when he was in his 30s after being disillusioned by the hypocrisy of some of his family and church members.

Over the years, his relationship with God was reduced to simple prayers for safety for himself and his wife.

When Chui Yun fell, Andrew was thankful to God that she survived. But he was lost and did not know what to do.

He watched her from the bedside. Though she was in a coma, hooked up to life support, her limbs continued twitching involuntarily. Saliva leaked from her open mouth.

Every visit was precious to him as it was during the COVID pandemic and hospital visits were restricted. Each time he saw his wife, he grabbed hold of her hand and prayed.

“God, please help us. I don’t know what to do. I have never asked You for a single thing before, but now I beg You to help my wife recover,” Andrew prayed.

For the rest of the day, he occupied himself by doing food delivery on his bicycle. Before that, he had worked in hospitals and ran his own medical consultancy. But now he needed a job with flexible hours, one that would keep him busy so that he would not be haunted by worry.

As day after day passed, his wife continued to be in a coma.

“I was not angry with God. I was thankful that He kept her alive. But I blamed myself because I did not understand why, as a trained medic and frontline responder, I did not do anything to help my wife when the crisis happened. I could not get past this issue with myself,” said Andrew.

Andrew used to be a senior medic in the naval base medical team and continued to volunteer with them thereafter.

Off life support and into a nursing home 

Almost two months went by. Though Chui Yun was still in a coma, doctors found that her vital signs was stable enough for life support to be removed.

Andrew did not have any family support to help him with the caregiving, so his wife – just 36 years old then – was moved into a nursing home to be cared for.

A tracheostomy – surgically creating an opening in the neck – was done to facilitate breathing.

On January 20, 2022, Chui Yun moved into Pacific Healthcare nursing home in Lengkok Bahru. Kelvin Ng, then the general manager of the home, said she was the youngest person that that he had ever seen being admitted into a nursing home.

As the pandemic was still raging then, Andrew was only allowed to visit his wife in person once every two weeks. However, the nurses there helped facilitate one video call a day between him and his wife.

For most of the day, Andrew would be out on his bicycle doing food delivery. He looked forward to the video call every day, when he could at least see his wife’s face even though she was still unresponsive, her eyes closed.

“She could not see me but she could hear my voice. I never gave up trying to connect with her because other brain injury survivors told me that they were still aware of what was happening around them though they were in a comatose state,” Andrew told Salt&Light.

During this period, Kelvin asked Andrew if he would like to be connected to Rev Chan Chee Keng from St Matthew’s Church for spiritual support. With consent from their families, Rev Chan has been visiting and praying for some of the residents at the nursing home.

“Kelvin and Rev Chan were a Godsend. I felt comfortable with Rev Chan from the start. After a visit, Rev Chan told me he sensed that my wife had a lot of frustrations and asked if he could pray for her. I gave the go ahead,” said Andrew.

Andrew also confided in Rev Chan his struggles with self-blame and guilt over not responding to his wife’s fall in ways that he wished he had.

The fateful video call 

After two months of daily video calls and sporadic physical visits, Andrew got used to the routine of pausing his food deliveries to talk to his wife before fulfilling the rest of the deliveries for the day.

On March 21, 2022, Andrew did what he always did: He got on the video call at the designated time, expecting to see his wife come into the frame, eyes closed.

But when she appeared in his phone screen, the first thing he noticed was that her eyes were open. The last time he saw her eyes was four months ago.   

The first time Andrew saw his wife’s eyes open after four months of being in a coma.

His heart leapt. As he called out to her, she did not respond or acknowledge him.

“She was unresponsive but I was happy and shocked to see her eyes. Immediately, I told the nurses in the nursing home to inform the doctor of the development,” said Andrew.

The doctor was equally shocked that Chui Yun had regained consciousness, though she was unresponsive.

“God is always on your side,” the doctor remarked to Andrew.

Making a video of her routine to “wake” her up

Seeing his wife conscious motivated Andrew to experiment with another idea, in the hope of helping her brain to heal and restore past memories.

He decided to make a video of how her typical day used to go: Her favourite meal spots, the people she met as she did her food delivery rounds and other unique individuals that she had told him about.

“In the past, before we sleep, she would tell me about her day and all the people she met and interacted with. So, I knew who to approach to feature in the video,” Andrew told Salt&Light.

He spent the next month hanging out at the spots his wife used to frequent, hoping to catch those people. All 27 of them agreed to help out with the video when they found out what had happened to his wife.

The video featured a young man who did deliveries using his skateboard, other food delivery friends who would talk to her about the weather or complain about the delivery fares going down. Andrew also included footage of her favourite lunch stops at Maxwell Food Centre and a fish soup restaurant.

When the video was completed, Andrew gave instructions to the nurses at the nursing home to play it on loop for his wife every day.

“I heard from the staff there that my wife’s eyes were very focused on the screen. I hoped the video would give her a sense of familiarity and trigger her memories,” said Andrew.

Now that Chui Yun’s eyes were open, Andrew noticed that she cried frequently.

However, it was not known if her crying was voluntary or involuntary.

In September that year, her crying suddenly evolved to laughing. However, she was still unresponsive to external stimuli.

The best birthday present ever

In January 2023, Andrew brought a chocolate cake to the nursing home to celebrate his 48^th birthday with his wife.

“Do you want to help me cut the cake?” Andrew challenged and teased his wife after he blew the candles.  

Andrew celebrating his 48th birthday with his wife in the nursing home.

He did not expect her to extend her hand, her fingers trying to grasp the plastic knife.

“She couldn’t grip the knife, but her being able to respond to me was the best birthday present ever,” said Andrew.

That same month, she also said her first word ­– “I”. Subsequently, she could drink water slowly using a syringe.

Chui Yun’s miraculous recovery cheered the heart of her husband. Rev Chan also rejoiced with Andrew over the progress Chui Yun had made.

Chui Yun while she was in the nursing home.

Sensing that Andrew needed a break, Rev Chan invited him to his church camp in Malaysia in June.

Andrew was prepared to politely decline the invitation, as he was concerned about caregiving for his wife. But he found himself telling the Pastor that if he managed to find interim caregiving help, he would come for the church camp.

He posted a request on his Facebook wall about needing caregiving help for his wife for a few days so that he could go for a church camp, but there was no response.

A few days before the church camp took place, however, two women volunteered to help out. One was their ex-colleague who was a mother of six and the other was his wife’s ex-colleague.

“I felt very heng (lucky). I believe things happen for a reason, so I knew I needed to go to the church camp,” said Andrew.

Andrew and his wife celebrating their wedding anniversary on October 1, 2023 in the nursing home. They dressed in wedding attire as they did not manage to do so during their ROM ceremony. Rev Chan (left) and Kelvin and his wife were also invited to the celebration.

Though Andrew was physically at the camp, his heart was with his wife back at the nursing home.

Most of the words of the sermons preached went over his head but he suddenly “woke up” when he heard the guest preacher Bishop Ng Moon Hing saying: “God will handle that (which concerns you)”.

“Instantly, I had clarity about my journey thus far. I realised that I managed to go so far without much hurdles because God was handling many things for me. There were many times when out of nowhere someone would come and assist me,” Andrew recalled.

His mind flashed back to the many instances when certain things happened at just the right time that seemed too “coincidental” to be attributed to luck and chance.

When he was in the ICU, he realised that the surgeon who had performed the surgery on Chui Yun was his friend. That friend happened to be on night duty then, which was rare. Andrew was able to speak unreservedly with his friend and communicate questions or worries that he had about his wife’s condition.

Though they do not have any family support, Andrew also perceived how God sent two of his former employees to volunteer to help take care of his wife while he headed out to work.

At that time, he had less than S$100 in his pocket. Finances were usually handed by his wife and he had no access to the bank accounts when she slipped into a coma. Yet he received a notification then that someone had transferred him a large sum of money. It turned out that his property agent had learnt about his situation and transferred him a sum of S$20,000 to tide him over.

Chui Yun was able to eat ice cream on her own last May.

During that period, he had to complete a lot of paperwork to apply for deputyship (where the court appoints an individual, known as a deputy, to make decisions on behalf of another person who lacks mental capacity) within a certain deadline.

A woman saw his desperate emails shooting around the various parties and called him at 9pm to tell him that she would help him with the deputyship application.

“She was from the IT department. It was not even her job. But she helped me and it was sorted out in the next few days,” marvelled Andrew.

Even when it came to making the video, Andrew saw that it was God who brought all of the 27 people to cross paths with him.

“I don’t have their contact numbers, except for one of them. So I just hung out where my wife usually hung out and waited for them. In fact, the very last person whom I found for the video had not been doing food delivery for a few months as he had found a job. But I managed to locate him because he came back after he lost his job,” said Andrew.

“And how I met Rev Chan and ended up in the church camp because two women popped up to help me.

“It was all God. But I did not see all of that until my awakening at camp,” he added.

The other line that jolted him awake from the sermon was this: “God is perfecting us (through the circumstances of our lives).”

Andrew said: “I felt freedom from the guilt that I was carrying about why I didn’t do anything when I saw my wife on the floor. Though I thought I was good enough to respond to any emergency, I was not. Yet through this, I realise God was making me a better person and drawing me closer to Himself.”

A year after Chui Yun first became responsive, she also decided to follow Jesus and was baptised in early 2024.

Chui Yun was baptised early last year at St Matthew’s Church.

Today, Andrew continues to do food deliveries for half a day as it gives him the flexibility to head back home to shower his wife and change her diapers. Chui Yun is now able to sit up, talk, brush her teeth, feed herself, surf the Internet and watch dramas on her tablet. However, she still suffers from memory loss and often mumbles to herself.

Church cell group members visiting Andrew and Chui Yun at their home recently.

“This may be a detour for us, but I can use this detour to help others detour better,” Andrew told Salt&Light. He has been reaching out to support others with brain injury, and has since led one person to the faith.

“I used to plan for a lot of things. Now I no longer plan much, but somehow Somebody will plan it for me.

“God has His timing. I just let God be God.”

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