“I had a plan of how God was supposed to heal me”: She wanted supernatural healing for her hand cancer, but God showed His power in another way 

It began with a marble-sized lump on the back of her left hand.

“Only when I clenched my fist and then fully opened it, did it hurt,” recalled Zaneta Heng, 39.

In August 2021, nearly eight months after the discovery, she decided to get a referral to see a specialist. The lump had been growing and her younger sister told her to “get it checked out”.

Zaneta (right) with her parents and sister (left) who had encouraged her to get the lump on her hand checked out.

“It grew from 0.5cm to 2cm. After a while, the growth plateaued,” Zaneta told Salt&Light.

That December, after the doctor removed the nearly 3cm-lump and sent it for tests, Zaneta was told that the growth was cancerous. Until then, she had not given it much thought.

“I thought I would just live with it. But when they told me it was cancer, I was a bit fearful, although I didn’t have a panic attack.”

Zaneta was given two options. Remove her entire middle finger from the base of the palm upwards to ensure that as much of the cancer cells were eradicated as possible; or undergo radiation therapy.

Surgery would offer a better prognosis, but it was drastic. Radiation, less invasive, was also less effective and came with its own issues. There would be scarring from the burns, as well as side effects such as brittle bones and fibrosis.

If nothing was done, there would be an 85% chance that the cancer would recur. With surgery, the odds were reduced, but only slightly, to 50%.

It was then that the magnitude of the situation sank in. Zaneta is a piano teacher and her hands were her livelihood.

To Zaneta, being able to play the piano was vital to her livelihood and ministry.

“The piano is part of my identity. My WhatsApp photo is a piano. So I told God, ‘I know You can heal me. Please do a miracle for me because I don’t want the other options. If You do it for me, I will testify about Your goodness.’

“I had a plan for how God was supposed to heal me.”

It had happened before

Zaneta is no stranger to miraculous healing.

In university, she had torn her ACL (Anterior Cruciate Ligament), a key ligament in the knee that connects the thigh to the shin, while playing netball. The injury left her unable to move sideways.

Instead of dealing with the matter, she allowed her condition to fester and only went for surgery years later because she “wanted to go back to playing netball”. 

The surgery to fix her knee resulted in two more because other issues arose. Healing took many months and Zaneta could not work. After a year, she was still left with a pinhole wound that just would not close.

Taken in March 2019, this is a picture of Zaneta’s knee following an ACL surgery in November 2017 which led to two more surgeries because of infection and complications.

“I went for a second opinion and was told that I probably had a bone infection which was why my wound was not healing.

“I needed surgery to remove the infected bone and if too much bone was taken out, I would need to have another surgery to put flesh in.”

So surgery was scheduled and an MRI was conducted first to give the doctor greater clarity for the surgery.

“Between the MRI and surgery, something in me said to go and make an appointment to see the doctor. I believe it was God though I didn’t know it then.”

A week before seeing the doctor, her mother gave her six bottles of collagen supplements. Zaneta downed it without expecting much.

“When I went to see the doctor, he told me, ‘Your wound is closing up.’”

Surgery was postponed, the wound closed on its own and Zaneta never went back to see the doctor.

It didn’t happen again

Asked if that healing made her all the more determined that God would heal her supernaturally of cancer, Zaneta said: “I was quite sure the cancer was a spiritual attack.

“It was a very rare kind of cancer called sarcoma. The chances of someone getting it is 1 in 50,000 or 0.0002%.

“And it could have been anywhere. The odds of it happening on my hand was even lower. I worship God by playing the piano in my own time, and for church and cell group. There are so many body parts, why so specific?”

Sarcoma is a rare and diverse type of cancer that has over 70,000 subtypes. It tends to occur in children and young adults.

Believing that spiritual attacks should be countered with spiritual weapons, Zaneta rejected medical procedures, and opted to turn to the Word and prayer instead.

Zaneta (fifth from left) with her Baker Road Methodist Church cell group.

“I started doing my Quiet Time diligently and faithfully every day,  I have not missed a single day since December 10, 2021.

“I used to not be as disciplined and did it as and when I felt like it. Now it has become a habit.”

Zaneta also attended every healing service she came across, “seeking prayers for healing from churches and healing ministries”.

Zaneta (centre in black) with her Cornerstone Community Church cell group.

This went on for two years. In that time, the half-yearly MRI scans showed that the lump at the back of her hand was “slowly but surely growing”.

God’s hand of intervention

Zaneta would have carried on this way had God not intervened miraculously. In January 2024, she went to a healing service held at Aldersgate Methodist Church. A friend of a friend had invited her.

It was quite a divine appointment because Zaneta, who had once worshipped at a Methodist church but had left for a while, had little contact with Methodist churches.

Zaneta’s hand in March 2023 when the tumour had grown back. The initial hand surgery when the tumour was removed for a biopsy was in December 2021.

At the service, the speaker asked a man in his 60s to pray for Zaneta because he was a hand doctor. Meeting the man was yet another divine arrangement because hand doctors are but a specialised few in Singapore and yet she met one at the service.

After praying for Zaneta, the doctor told her to see a hand professor for a second opinion. That second opinion led to a third and both doctors told her the same thing her original physician had told her in 2021: That surgery was the best course of action.

With that, Zaneta finally felt the peace to take the medical route. In April 2024, she underwent surgery. This involved removing bones, tendon and skin from the back of her left hand to totally eradicate the tumour and cancer cells; and reconstructing the parts that had been removed using the calf bone of her left leg.

“God gives us spare parts,” quipped Zaneta.

God’s amazing grace

While still certain that the cancer was a spiritual attack, Zaneta said: “Now that I look back, if I had done the surgery in 2021, then the extent of the surgery would have been smaller, just the middle finger, bone, tendon and the skin of the middle finger.

“Because I waited so long, it affected my index and ring finger as well.”

Zaneta’s hand in December 2023 after a second biopsy.

The healing may not have been through the supernatural means she had sought, but the fact that the cancer was contained to her hand was no small miracle.

“God protected me – it was an aggressive cancer. I don’t ever blame God. He is a good and loving God,” she told Salt&Light.

“It was a consequence of my inaction, but I never had peace about surgery until I saw the two doctors. I thank God that He gave me time to come to terms with the surgery.”

God would grant Zaneta another miracle. A surgery on the tendons of her fingers was scheduled for October 2024. But by then, she was able to bend her fingers and straighten them a little so surgery was no longer required.

Today, Zaneta has returned to playing and teaching the piano.

Zaneta playing at a concert she organised for all 16 of her piano students on November 1, 2025.

“I really held on to Genesis 50:20. There is this song that saw me through my surgery and hospital stay, Sovereign Over Us by Michael W Smith.

“The lyrics that spoke to me – ‘Your plans are still to prosper’ – popped into my spirit when I was in the hospital. I just kept playing and singing it. This song is based on Genesis 50:20.”

Of the one thing she learnt about how God heals, Zaneta said: “We can’t dictate that, ‘God, You must do it this way.’ God is so creative, He can use anything and everything to heal us. Surgery was one of His ways of healing me.

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