Her daughter survived leukaemia as a baby. Five years later, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer
When Vanessia Woo’s daughter was diagnosed with leukaemia at five weeks old, she spent months by her side in hospital. Now, after battling Stage 3 breast cancer herself, mother and daughter are walking the Fashion for Cancer runway.
Vanessia Woo’s daughter Olivia had leukaemia at five weeks old. Later, Woo was diagnosed with breast cancer. They will walk at Fashion for Cancer, an annual charity fashion show, on Aug 29, 2026. (Photo: Vanessia Woo)
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Like most mothers, Vanessia Woo documented the precious first days, weeks and months after her daughter’s birth. But her photos weren’t like the ones you’d usually see.
There were no first smiles, yawns or tummy time. No stroller rides or first visits to the pool.
“Olivia doesn’t have regular baby photos,” the 48-year-old mother said.
This is because Olivia Tan, now eight, had spent the first few months of her young life in an isolation ward battling infantile acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
This is a rare and aggressive blood cancer that occurs in babies under one year old. The bone marrow produces large numbers of abnormal white blood cells which crowd out healthy blood cells, and impair the body’s ability to fight infections, carry oxygen and stop bleeding.
The tiny infant I saw in every photo Woo showed me had tubes sticking out of her face and body.
“This thing connected to her is a Hickman line (a tube inserted into a large vein in the chest, and left in there for chemotherapy),” Woo explained.
“One of the drugs caused her to bloat up. You almost cannot recognise her,” she shared of the next photo.
Then, as I looked at what I thought was an empty ward at first, Woo said: “This is the isolation room. This is the chemo drug. You almost can’t see her. All you see is equipment.”
Diagnosed at five weeks old, Olivia’s body was flooded with chemotherapy drugs even before she could safely start on solids.
The powerful drugs caused side effects, including foot drop. She cannot lift her left foot and has no control of her left ankle and below. She wears an ankle-foot orthosis to help her walk.
On Aug 29, Olivia will be walking the runway at Fashion for Cancer, an annual charity fashion show in Singapore that features cancer patients and survivors, and raises funds for research and patient support. She will be joined by her mother, Woo, who was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 2023.
THE DIAGNOSIS NO PARENT EXPECTS
A precocious girl, Olivia was listening intently beside us. Her mother had told her about her cancer battle before but she still feels surprised hearing it retold. She has no memory of it.
In 2018, shortly after her full-month celebration, her appetite suddenly crashed. She vomited most of the milk she drank, slept extensively and developed a fever.
Her mother took her to the hospital where they did a blood test, and then a second blood test – “just needed to be sure”, Woo recalled.
The next day, at least six doctors came to see Woo and her husband. Olivia had infantile acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Doctors told them that 90 per cent of the cells in Olivia’s bone marrow were leukaemia cells and that she had a 30 per cent chance of recovery, Woo said.
The next day, Olivia underwent a procedure to insert a tube into a vein in her chest so that doctors could deliver chemotherapy. Because Olivia was only weeks old, Woo worried that the toxicity of the chemotherapy would be too much for her.
“I asked the doctor what would happen if we did not treat her. It was not the answer I was expecting.
“He said all her organs would start to fail and she would suffer. It’d be terrible,” she recalled.
FIVE WEEKS OLD AND FIGHTING CANCER
Woo, who is a facilities manager, took three years off work to care for Olivia. She spent the next six months in an isolation ward with her daughter, fighting the cancer. Her two older kids were 10 and two years old then.
Her husband, who was on paternity leave for four months, came during the day to relieve Woo. This allowed her to return home on some days to shower, rest a little and prepare to stay the night.
Nurses wore personal protective equipment (PPE) to deliver the chemotherapy drug. Within a week or two, Olivia’s hair started to fall out. She bloated up visibly from the drugs, and developed coin-sized ulcers all over her bottom.
“She couldn’t wear a diaper. Every time she pooped and we had to clean it, it was so painful that she would cry. Eventually, she developed an abscess deep inside her bum and needed surgery (to drain it),” Woo said.
Woo also began to notice that Olivia’s left foot was less active than her right. Doctors suspect that the chemotherapy drugs had damaged one of the nerves in her foot, causing foot drop.
The hardest part was sending her for repeated lumbar punctures, in which a long needle is pushed into her lower back to collect fluid for testing, said Woo. She recalled that because Olivia was only weeks old, she underwent the procedure without anaesthesia or pain relief, while nurses held her still. “That broke me,” Woo said.
But Woo and Olivia braved through treatment.
Olivia responded well to chemotherapy, and four months later, doctors began to discuss stem cell transplant, and tested family members for compatibility.
Her eldest daughter was found to be a perfect match – the family used her cord blood, that they had stored at birth, for the transplant.
After the transplant, Olivia’s bone marrow started to function normally. She was discharged when she was eight months old but continued to return to the hospital two to three times a week for check-ups.
Because she was so young and the chemotherapy so intensive, doctors closely monitored her organs, Woo said. “We saw a heart doctor, a dietitian, a psychologist, neurologists… Even today, she still goes for echocardiograms to monitor her heart,” Woo told CNA Women.
Though her cancer is now in remission, she continues to see her oncologist yearly to monitor for any signs of relapse.
Another long-term effect of her cancer treatment is growth hormone deficiency. In May this year, Olivia started on daily growth hormone injections to help her grow normally, and doctors are monitoring it for six to 12 months to see how well she responds to the treatment.
A SECOND CANCER DIAGNOSIS IN THE FAMILY
After spending years fighting cancer with Olivia, Woo was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in August 2023. She discovered a lump in her left breast, and diagnostic tests showed the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes below her collarbone.
Between 2023 and 2024, she underwent chemotherapy, a bilateral mastectomy to remove both her breasts, surgery to remove lymph nodes from her armpit, radiotherapy treatment and breast reconstruction surgery.
Telling her parents and children was hard, she said. Young Olivia, however, had already lived through the cancer journey, and was surprisingly calm.
“When I rested in bed, she would come very quietly and put her hand on my shoulder and pat me gently. She would smile and lie next to me. No words,” Woo recalled.
In her earlier battle with Olivia against leukaemia, Woo had met other children in the hospital who were confronting cancer.
“I thought to myself, if children of that age are so resilient, as an adult, I should be able to brave through this,” she said.
After completing most of her treatment, Woo is now on hormone therapy, which she will have to continue for five to 10 years.
Aware that her cancer could relapse, she now lives with more urgency and purpose.
This year, after chancing upon the casting call for Fashion for Cancer, Woo decided to send in her video, introducing herself, as well as Olivia as a fellow cancer survivor.
When mother and daughter were selected to walk the runway, Olivia was thrilled.
Even though the girl finds herself sometimes having to navigate insensitive remarks about her foot drop, it has “never stopped her from doing anything”, said her mother.
In fact, when I asked Olivia what it feels like to be asked about her foot drop, she was both soft-eyed and spirited.
“Exhausted,” she said. “Because in my mind, I say, why does everybody keep asking?”
She prefers to talk about the things that make her who she is – her love for dancing, hip hop and singing. Her favourite song is Taylor Swift’s Love Story, she tells me.
As an eight-year-old advocate for one of life’s toughest curveballs, I asked her what she would say to someone with cancer.
“Don’t worry, you won’t feel any pain. If you feel any pain, I will be right at your side and calm you down,” she said quietly.
And what message does she have when walking the runway for cancer?
Here, the young girl paused for a long moment. Then, she smiled softly.
“Forward together,” she said.
CNA Women is a section on CNA Lifestyle that seeks to inform, empower and inspire the modern woman. If you have women-related news, issues and ideas to share with us, email CNAWomen [at] mediacorp.com.sg.
Source: CNA/pc
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