Two-year-old Zayden Tok was at his grandmother’s house on the evening of Sept 22 last year when he complained of bad tummy pain.
“It was so intense that he cried out loud and his lips turned white,” said his mother, Madam Tan Zilan, who was present at the time.
It was after dinner and her son was sitting in a toddler high chair watching a video. She lifted him out of the chair to pacify him. But when she tried to touch the boy’s tummy, his body tensed up. “My instincts told me that I needed to take him to hospital,” said the logistics executive who is in her mid-30s.
At Mount Alvernia Hospital’s accident and emergency department, Madam Tan showed the doctor a photograph of her son’s stools from a few weeks ago. It was purplish red and coated with mucus.
Her son had been complaining of occasional stomach pain since early September, she said.
At Mount Alvernia, a blood test found Zayden’s haemoglobin level to be dangerously low at 5.1. A normal reading for children is about 12.
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