From catwalk to cane: This former model and dermatologist will do whatever it takes to regain her old life

At 18, Dr Jessica Ee walked down runways dressed in designer clothes and posed for editorial features in magazines like Harper's Bazaar.

In her twenties, she swapped those runways for hospital hallways as she worked her way through her medical residency, eventually becoming an associate consultant dermatologist at Sengkang General Hospital.

Today, at 34, the runway she walks is very different. Gone are the bright lights and the clicking of camera shutters or the bustle of a hospital ward. 

Instead, the former dermatologist grips a cane as she takes slow, deliberate steps walking from one end to the other in a room at a rehabilitation centre.

The cheers Dr Ee once received during her modelling days are instead replaced by whoops of encouragement from her physiotherapist and occupational therapist at social service agency Abilities Beyond Limitations and Expectations (ABLE).

Despite what most would consider a simple feat, each step requires a tremendous amount of effort on her part, both physically and mentally. 

It involves swinging her left leg forward, grounding herself, and then shifting her energies and weight to her walking stick. What takes a second and little thought for most adults takes her minutes and immense concentration. 

The toll these physiotherapy exercises takes on her is apparent judging from her deep breaths and furrowed brows that I observed last week. But she did not complain once and just gritted her teeth as she went through the motions.

A little over two years ago, at the age of 32, Dr Ee suffered a stroke during a training session she was conducting for medical students.

The sudden loss of blood supply to her brain robbed her of her mobility on the left side of her body – affecting her ability to walk and perform the most basic of activities like dressing herself or even swallowing. 

"It felt like my body wasn't listening to me," she told me during our interview on Nov 20 at Sengkang General Hospital, where she does non-clinical work twice a week as part of a job trial arranged by her rehabilitation doctor. 

At times during our conversation, her helper had to gently lift her from her position on the chair so that she could sit upright. Her speech was slow as she needed time to articulate each word and process my questions. 

But Dr Ee, I soon learnt, is not looking for pity or praise for her steadfast attitude. She just wants one thing: to return to practice and serve her patients again.

FROM THE RUNWAY TO HOSPITAL HALLWAYS

At 1.8m, Dr Ee towered over her classmates in junior college. They called her "Bamboo Ee", a nickname she loathed. 

"It was quite hurtful," she recalled. Despite her requests for them to stop using the nickname her classmates would reply: "You look like a bamboo. So what, why can't we call you bamboo?"

But instead of shrinking away, she decided to embrace her height and find a good use for it. At 18, she signed up for an international modelling competition called Elite Model Look, known for discovering supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Lara Stone. 

She learnt how to pose and walk the runway by watching the television series America's Next Top Model, with season seven's winner CariDee English being her favourite model. 

"It's her bold looks that drew me to her," Dr Ee said.

Although Dr Ee did not win the competition, she gained the interest of bookers. 

They invited her for castings for runway shows and editorial work. One of her favourite gigs was walking in the Audi Fashion Festival in designs by Max Tan, whose androgynous looks she adored.

It was not easy at the start, she added.

"Sometimes when I (was) at a photo shoot or at a runway show, I did feel like there are many people judging me, and that can be quite stressful," she said.

"It's their comments or the way they look at you, or the way they whisper to each other, and you (can't help but wonder) if they are talking about you."

Her parents knew little about her modelling pursuits. In fact, they only knew Dr Ee participated in The New Paper's New Face 2012 when she became a finalist and her face was plastered across the tabloid. Her parents still keep clippings of those articles, alongside other photos of her shoots.

When asked whether she feels conscious about the way she looks post-stroke given she was once paid for her looks, she did not answer but 
my interactions with her showed me that she does not care what others think and dresses for herself.

She brought two outfit choices with her for our interview – one as a spare outfit in case it looked better through our camera lens, and another that was more comfortable for her medical appointment after.

Dr Ee said that while she enjoyed the limelight and fashion, she knew her future lay in medicine.

"In junior college, I was one of the few students selected to join a one-week attachment at Singapore General Hospital. Following doctors around made me realise how meaningful their work was," she said.

"But seeing grateful patients left a strong impression... I knew I wanted to be a doctor."

So when she wasn't modelling, she spent her other hours studying and eventually secured a spot in the National University of Singapore's Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. 

"I would bring my medical textbooks with me for my modelling gigs as well. So sometimes when the makeup artist is just doing my hair and makeup, I'll be reading my medical textbooks to save time," she said, adding that other models would be reading too, albeit mostly magazines.

"I like both (studying medicine and modelling), so I didn't find it so stressful."

After graduating from medical school, Dr Ee gave up modelling to focus on her clinical duties. 

As she rotated through departments, she grew increasingly interested in the skin conditions her patients faced.

As she suffered from eczema when she was eight years old, she also understood firsthand the discomfort, self-consciousness, and frustration that patients with skin conditions feel. 

This empathy solidified her dream of becoming a dermatologist – a dream she was robbed of just years later. 

LIFE CHANGED IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

In June 2023, Dr Ee experienced a precursor to her stroke. 

While having dinner with a group of friends, she suddenly couldn't speak. Her mind raced with thoughts but she suddenly became mute, unable to vocalise what she was thinking. 

"I was able to understand what people were saying, but I just (couldn't) say anything. That was scary, but the good thing is that it resolved after around 10 minutes," said Dr Ee. 

While her friends panicked, Dr Ee's years of professional practice kept her calm and she focused on one thing – getting to the emergency room as quickly as possible. 

Doctors told her she experienced a transient ischemic attack, or a mini stroke, caused by a brief blockage of blood flow to the brain due to a hole in her heart. This was the first time she was also diagnosed with having a hole in her heart. 

The attack did not cause any long-term damage, but it was a warning sign of things to come. According to the Mayo Clinic, one in three people who experience a transient ischemic attack wind up experiencing a stroke.

Two months later, while conducting a tutorial for medical students, Dr Ee collapsed. A student caught her before she slammed onto the floor, but the signs of stroke were obvious to her – she could not move her left arm or leg, and the left side of her face drooped.

The rest was a blur for Dr Ee, but she recalled a nurse rushing into the classroom with a wheelchair. 

"I was nervous and confused. I wondered why it happened, if it could happen again, and how I would recover the strength on my left side," she said. 

Following the stroke, Dr Ee spent six months in the hospital, of which the first week was spent in the intensive care unit and another five days were in the high dependency unit.

She spent her time in hospital learning to function independently from scratch. In the early days post-stroke, it took five physiotherapists to help her stand.  

With her resolve to get better, she gained some small victories after a month, like the ability to swallow. 

After six months, she was finally discharged but was still unable to walk or move her left arm.

Throughout her hospital stay and to this day, Dr Ee's parents have been her anchor, she said. 

Her mother would visit the hospital daily and on occasion stay overnight to accompany her daughter. She learnt from nurses how to care for Dr Ee and and helped her with her exercises. As Dr Ee slowly built her strength, her mother would join her for walks around their housing estate on days where she does not have physiotherapy.

Meanwhile, her father taught her mindfulness meditation to calm her mind and now drives Dr Ee to her physiotherapy, occupational therapy and doctor appointments almost every day.

The couple has also come up with small activities to help aid Dr Ee's recovery. They take her on slow walks around her housing estate daily, and blast music in the car while shuttling between medical appointments to encourage Dr Ee to sing and keep her head up – both literally and figuratively.

Other stroke patients they have seen often give up during the drawn-out road to recovery, or have emotional outbursts from the frustration of being unable to do basic tasks like opening a bottle. 

Her parents said they did not want to be named for this article, as they did not want to "distract from their daughter's story of strength". Her mother said that they are "simply doing what most parents would do".

After Dr Ee's parents left the Sengkang General Hospital's office pantry where I was interviewing her, she admitted that she worries about being a burden to her parents.

“I have not told them about this," she said softly. "Because I'm not sure if it will make them more worried."

REBUILDING HER LIFE AND GIVING HOPE TO OTHERS

After our interview, I followed Dr Ee for her weekly traditional Chinese medicine treatment at Sengkang General Hospital alongside her parents and helper. 

To me, she seemed unfazed by the 12 needles hooked up to an electrical circuit inserted in her head, neck, arms and thighs meant to promote healing.

But her parents told me a different story: that she puts up a strong front despite finding the treatment uncomfortable and a little bit scary.

Like clockwork, Mrs Ee removed Dr Ee's spectacles so she could not see the needles while Mr Ee meddled with his phone to get Nobody by South Korean girl group Wonder Girls blasting through his phone as a distraction for Dr Ee.

Outside the doctor's room, her parents said Dr Ee was a shy girl in primary school, but blossomed into a strong and confident woman who graced magazines and runways. 

Even after her devastating stroke, she has remained confident about her abilities and her resolve to regain her life has been unwavering, they said with pride.  

They added that their daughter has never complained once about her treatments and physiotherapy sessions and with her steadfast determination, managed to walk short distances two months ago.

While Dr Ee may still be on the road to recovery herself, she still tries to encourage others in her shoes. For example, she sings the Chinese romance song Xiao Wei, which is a Chinese name, whenever she sees an elderly woman during her physiotherapy session at ABLE. 

"Every time I see that aunty, who I also call Xiao Wei, I will sing her Xiao Wei. She will immediately smile and I can see her putting in more effort into the exercises because she's in a better mood," Dr Ee told me.

She also continues to run her TikTok account, where she gives "brutally honest" advice as a dermatologist, such as how edible sunscreen is useless.

Since starting her account four years ago, she has grown a steady follower base of 14,000 who look forward to her advice on different skincare products and the effectiveness of their ingredients. 

There are occasionally comments from viewers about how she looks better and is improving, which encourages her, she said.  

She was also recently featured as a beneficiary for ABLE in the President's Challenge this year to raise funds for the social service agency. Appearing on television has reconnected her with old friends who have reached out and asked about her health, further lifting her spirits.

While she may not be able to practise medicine just yet, she continues to work at Sengkang General Hospital twice a week as part of a job trial, filling out patient-related documents and interacting with her colleagues. 

Her parents also take her to different talks organised by the medical fraternity so she can keep her medical knowledge updated as well – all in hopes that she might return to practise dermatology again one day.

The road to recovery is not straightforward and there is no clear timeline for when she'll be able to return to dermatology practice, but Dr Ee hopes to regain most of her movement in two to three years. Her short-term goals are to be able to shower and change her own clothes independently. 

Through everything, Dr Ee continues to keep herself focused and reminded of how far she has come in her recovery. She jots down small notes in her diary, similar to what she would do for her patients, so she can look back at the progress she has made.

"I'll write pointers on what I did. Like, today I ate lunch. Today I lifted my arm. Then, I had dinner," she said.

For now, she said she's focused on simple things that bring her joy like singing old songs in the car, walking beside her wheelchair during the family's weekend outings and being with her younger brother, who is autistic and non-verbal, but brings her comfort simply by being there.

"I feel the small improvements can compound to be something great," she said.

As I watched her walk her new "runway" in ABLE’s physiotherapy room, I couldn't help but silently cheer her on with bated breath especially when she had to tackle a small flight of stairs at the end of her walk. 

Slowly but surely she made it to the top and gave a triumphant look to her supporting team, before shouting "I am the best!" to the tune of the K-pop hit song by girl band 2NE1.

By then I could not help but cheer out loud alongside her therapists. 

My cheers weren't just for the steps she took, but for the hope – shared by everyone in the room – that she will soon realise her dream of becoming a dermatologist again.