Brave Heart

To mark International Women’s Day, we pay tribute to enrolled nurse Hawa Bebe Bte Hydrose, who battled breast cancer to return to work in the delivery suite.

- Mary Lim

Stage 2 breast cancer usually responds well to treatment, but what if you also have thrombocytopenia, a condition where blood platelets are abnormally low? When Hawa Bebe Bte Hydrose, an enrolled nurse at Thomson Medical Centr delivery suite, learnt of her condition in December 2015, she was also told that chemotherapy could further lower platelet production and may lead to more side effects.

“This meant that chemotherapy would become more complicated as my platelet count needed to be monitored carefully. So I said no,” says this single mother of two sons, who is affectionately known by colleagues and patients as “Bebe”. But eventually, with encouragement from her oncologist, Bebe decided to go for it: from February to August 2016, she went for 17 sessions of chemotherapy to fight the cancer.