"I wanted to open the window and jump. I just couldn't take it anymore," he says. "That's when I discovered why hospital windows are locked -- for a good reason."
The years after the operation have not been easy. He has had to take a barrage of drugs to suppress rejection of his "foreign" heart.
Currently, he pops a dozen pills daily. The medication, including steroids, has puffed up his face and affected his kidneys, which he says are just 40 percent functional.
Apart from his sheer will power to go on living, Singapore's excellent health care system has also helped prolong his life, Seah admits.
Doctors have to manage just the right dosage of medicine to suppress rejection of the transplanted heart and at the same time minimize toxic levels in the blood which would damage the kidneys.
Still, he says his kidneys are withering and it's "only a matter of time" before they give up. He undergoes regular medical health checks, including one that evaluates the effect of some of the medication on his bones.
The surgery has also restricted Seah's once fast-paced life as a journalist, including stints as a wire agency correspondent, bureau chief in Bangkok for an Asian magazine and news editor for the Hong Kong Standard newspaper.
He also served for four years as foreign editor of Singapore's Straits Times, before being recruited as the chief editor for another newspaper, the short-lived Monitor.
Seah has remained a journalist at heart, voraciously keeping himself updated on the latest news. Newspaper cutouts yellowed by time are arranged in folders on a shelf in his office to complement his digital library.
From the moment he recovered, Seah has refused to be slowed down and dislikes being treated as a heart transplant patient.
He now writes a column twice a week for Malaysia's most widely circulated English-language newspaper, The Star, and single-handedly publishes his Web site, which he set up in 2000, long before the word "blog" became popular.
Seah recalled that when he returned to Singapore after his operation, he was greeted at the airport by nurses who brought a wheelchair.
"I told myself, `God! Is this what they think of me? How am I going to get a job?'" he recalls.
Seah says he discovered the identity of his donor by chance, when he saw his name at a hospital bulletin board.
Unfortunately, he has had no chance to thank the donor's family as Australian law forbids the identities of both donor and recipient to be divulged. If he had any message to the family now, what would it be?
"I would like to say thanks very much," he says, adding that the organ donation may have made "an impact in the society that I live in."
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