Rhen Teh, 21, spends most of her days dancing, teaching choreography and chasing opportunities in London’s performing arts scene. The Damansara-born performer is signed with London agency Hashtag Agency and anyone watching her move to a K-pop track would have little reason to guess that at 19 she survived a ruptured appendix before being diagnosed with metastatic papillary thyroid cancer.
The night she collapsed on campus
Speaking to FMT Lifestyle, Teh said her troubles began in November 2024 while she was studying law at the University of Essex. She had spent the whole day in stomach pain without knowing why and that night she fainted on campus.
“My friends had to call an Uber to take me to the hospital,” she recalled.
She learnt that her appendix had ruptured and was rushed into surgery, where one of the doctors told her it was one of the worst cases of appendicitis he had ever seen. She spent about two weeks in hospital, and the damage was so severe that she could not eat for 11 days straight, which she described as the worst pain she had ever felt.
A second diagnosis, a month later
Just as she believed the worst had passed, her doctor called about a month later and asked her to come in and to bring a parent or someone who could give her emotional support.
“I knew then it was going to be bad news,” she said.
A fine needle aspiration, a procedure that takes cells from a suspicious lump for examination, showed that she had metastatic papillary thyroid cancer.
“I sobbed in my room for a very long time. I thought, how could this happen to me? I was only 19,” she said.
Her doctor offered some reassurance since the cancer was treatable, and she went on to have surgery to remove her thyroid gland and more than 50 lymph nodes from her neck. The thought of living without a thyroid and taking medication for the rest of her life frightened her at first, but she says it has simply become part of daily life.
A different relationship with dance
Teh trained in ballet until she was 17 and performed in Malaysian productions such as “The Fairy Doll” and “Don Quixote” with the Asia Ballet Academy. Before she fell ill, dance had become demanding and self-critical, a place where she was always asking why she could not get a variation right.
“I was dancing to please other people more than myself. But after what happened, I discovered how much I had taken it for granted,” she said. “After that, I realised how lucky I was just to be able to move.”
Back on the studio floor
Teh no longer shows any signs of cancer. She has taught her own choreography at London venues including Base Studios, Pineapple Dance Studios and Arc Studios, auditions for as many productions as she can, and recently organised an event that raised more than £300 for a cancer charity. She also finished her law degree and graduated with upper second-class honours.
Illness, she says, changed how she thinks about fear and ambition and it is the reason she came back to dancing at all.
“When I dance, I like to channel my emotions and incorporate them into my moves. It feels like I’m making something out of the pain I felt,” she said.
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Read also: ‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman – In Real Life
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‘I gave up my family to pursue my dreams’ Shares 34 YO M’sian woman
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