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Hallam continues to teach and battle cancer
By Aarti Sreenivas
He qualified as the top junior road racing cyclist in the late 1980s, received an invitation to try out for the Olympics and placed 1st in the 2009 Singapore J.P. Morgan corporate challenge.
An icon for healthy living at SAS, English teacher Andrew Hallam was diagnosed with a rare type of bone cancer called chomdrosarcoma. Hallam left for surgery on the Nov 14 and returned to teach this semester a month and a half later, wearing a device that looked like a centerion’s breastplate.
“My first reaction when I heard that I had cancer was a purposeful one. I was slightly scared but my main response was to find out how they could remove the cancer,” Hallam said.
Hallam’s doctors first detected what they thought was a benign growth seven years ago when he had to take a mandatory chest x-ray. They suggested monitoring his chest regularly through MRI scans in case the growth turned cancerous. Last year, Hallam did not recieve his MRI scan and the growth turned malignant and doubled in size.
Doctors do not know how this type of bone cancer, can be acquired but believe that one needs to have a genetic predisposition.
“Cancer runs in my my family,” Hallam said. “My parents are the longest to live in our family going back a number of generations, and they are just 65 years old.”
Since chemotherapy is not effective for this type of cancer, doctors removed eight cm of three separate ribs, a small slice of his lungs and a part of his spine taken out in a six-hour long surgery.
“The next step after the surgery is to take care of my body as nobody knows how it is going to respond to the treatment,” Hallam said.
To prevent creating a hostile environment for cancer to grow, Hallam altered his diet to eat wild fish, organic foods and hormone-free chicken. He eats no red meat. In addition to his dietary goals, Hallam has physical ones to achieve as well.
Winner of last year’s J.P. Morgan Corporate Singapore challenge, Hallam is still keen to pursue running.
“I would like to run a 5.6 km race at the end of April,” Hallam said. “If I place top 20 this year, it would be a greater achievement than to have gotten first last year.”
While there is no clear idea about how the bones will respond to this therapy, Hallam is optimistic about recovering.
“Obstacles are what you see when you lose sight of your goal,” Hallam said.
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