Warriors and Survivors - 250

Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 250

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

The Quiet Weight of Ahmad’s Days

Ahmad is ten years old. He is at an age where life is supposed to be loud, filled with questions, movement, and small, ordinary chaos. But his days have become quiet in ways no child’s should. A few months ago, Ahmad was diagnosed with leukemia, and since then, silence has slowly settled into his life and the lives of those who love him.

The hospital became familiar before he had time to understand why. White corridors, waiting rooms, and carefully spoken conversations replaced classrooms and playgrounds. Doctors explained things gently, but Ahmad understood enough to know that something serious had taken hold of his body. He learned new routines quickly: blood tests, long hours of waiting, medicines that left him tired and sick. None of it felt dramatic. It was simply exhausting.

Leukemia did not take everything from Ahmad all at once. Instead, it arrived quietly and stayed. At first, he was just more tired than usual. Then he stopped finishing games. Eventually, he stopped asking to play at all. His body no longer responded the way it used to, and that loss was difficult to explain, even to himself.

Chemotherapy brought its own challenges. Food lost its flavor. Nausea became familiar. Pain settled into his bones and muscles. When his hair began to fall out, no one made a scene. Ahmad noticed anyway. He started wearing caps and pulling them low, not because anyone asked him to, but because it made the world feel easier to face.

School slowly slipped away from him. Missed days became missed weeks. Lessons continued without him, and friendships grew quieter. When classmates visited, they spoke carefully, unsure of what to say. Ahmad smiled for them, but after they left, the room felt larger and emptier than before.

Emotionally, the weight was constant. Ahmad rarely complained. When asked how he felt, he usually said he was fine. He seemed to understand, instinctively, that worry already filled the room. So he carried his fear quietly, believing silence was a form of strength.

For his family, the battle was equally unspoken. Their lives reorganized around hospital visits, test results, and medication schedules. Sleep came in short stretches. Conversations became cautious. There were questions they never asked out loud and fears they saved for moments when Ahmad could not hear.

Watching a child endure pain without being able to stop it changes a parent. There is a particular kind of helplessness in holding your child’s hand while knowing you cannot take the suffering away. Medical expenses added another layer of strain, but even that felt secondary to the emotional cost of watching Ahmad grow older in ways no child should have to.

Nights were the hardest. Pain does not rest when the world goes quiet. Some nights Ahmad lay awake, staring at the ceiling, waiting for discomfort to pass. One of his parents always stayed close, offering presence when answers were not possible.

And yet, life continued in small, fragile moments. A laugh during a cartoon. A short walk down the hospital hallway. A day when the pain eased just enough to breathe. These moments did not erase the struggle, but they reminded the family that hope can exist alongside fear.

Ahmad’s story is not loud. It does not ask for attention. It exists in quiet hospital rooms, in tired smiles, in the silent courage of a child and the steady love of a family doing everything they can.

This is what illness often looks like, not dramatic, not visible from the outside, but deeply human. A silent struggle carried day by day, where strength lies only in endurance.

Prayers for Ahmad and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen

Note: “The child’s name has been changed to protect privacy, and the accompanying image is AI-generated.”

Warriors and Survivors - 249

Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 249

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

This week’s story is about Waqas, a young child from Sialkot whose life has been quietly reshaped by a diagnosis most people have never heard of it: hepatoblastoma. A rare liver cancer in children, the word itself sounds distant and clinical, but for Waqas and his family, it has become part of their everyday language, their routines, and their worries.

Before the diagnosis, Waqas’s days were ordinary in the way childhood should be. Mornings began with getting ready, small complaints about food, running around the house, and being called back again and again by his mother. Like many families, they did not think much about health beyond the usual childhood fevers or stomach aches. When Waqas started to lose his appetite and complained of discomfort, it did not immediately feel alarming. Children fall sick; parents worry and then move on. But this time, the worry did not pass.

The day the diagnosis was confirmed, life seemed to split into a “before” and an “after.” For his parents, especially his mother, the shock was numbing. The word “tumor” echoed in her mind long after the doctor finished speaking. She nodded as instructions were given, reports explained, and treatment plans discussed, but inside she felt hollow. It is a particular kind of pain when the illness belongs to a child you do not know where to place your fear or how to carry it.

Waqas himself does not fully understand what hepatoblastoma means. What he understands is that his life now involves hospitals. His days are no longer measured by school hours or playtime, but by appointments, scans, blood tests, and waiting rooms. Mornings often begin earlier than they used to, with his parents gently waking him, encouraging him to eat something even when his appetite is low. Sometimes he cooperates, sometimes he turns his face away, already tired before the day has begun.

Hospital days are long. There is a lot of waiting, waiting to be called in, waiting for blood results, waiting for doctors to come back with explanations. For a child, this waiting can feel endless. Waqas sits quietly, sometimes playing with a small toy, sometimes leaning against his mother’s side. His parents try to distract him, but the anxiety never fully leaves. Needles, machines, unfamiliar faces all of it becomes part of what “normal” looks like now.

At home, life does not return to what it was. Everyday routines are adjusted around his energy levels. Some days Waqas feels slightly better and asks to play; on other days, even getting out of bed feels like too much. His family has learned to celebrate small things finishing a meal, sleeping without pain, a day without tears. These moments may seem insignificant to others, but for families like Waqas’s, they carry immense meaning.

The emotional toll is constant. His parents move through their days with a quiet heaviness. There are practical worries traveling for treatment, managing expenses, arranging care but beneath all of that is a deeper fear they rarely voice. At night, when the house is quiet, those fears become louder. Like many parents of children with cancer, they ask questions with no easy answers: Why him? How long will this last? Will he be okay?

Healthcare workers become an important part of Waqas’s life. Nurses who speak softly, doctors who explain things patiently, and support staff who try to make a frightening place feel a little safer. Even for them, caring for children like Waqas is emotionally demanding. Pediatric oncology is not just about treatment protocols; it is about witnessing families at their most vulnerable and trying, day after day, to offer both medical care and human comfort.

What is often missed when we talk about childhood cancer is how ordinary and quiet the struggle is. There are no dramatic moments most days. There is fatigue, uncertainty, and repetition. There is learning to live with unpredictability and to function even when fear is always present. Waqas’s story is not about grand bravery; it is about endurance. It is about a child adjusting to a world that suddenly feels smaller and more fragile, and a family doing their best to hold things together.

Yet, even in this difficult routine, there is a thread of hope. It appears in Waqas’s small smiles, in the way he reaches for his parents’ hands, and in the moments when he forgets, just briefly, that he is sick. Hope is not loud here; it is quiet and persistent, carried gently from one day to the next.

By sharing Waqas’s story, the aim is not only awareness of hepatoblastoma or pediatric cancer but understanding. Understanding that behind every diagnosis is a child learning to live differently, a family navigating fear and love side by side, and a daily life reshaped by illness in ways most of us never see.

Prayers for Waqas and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen

Note: “The child’s name has been changed to protect privacy, and the accompanying image is AI-generated.”

Warriors and Survivors - 248

Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 248

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

This week, I want to share the story of Ali, an eight year old boy whose life has been suddenly interrupted by illness. Ali comes from a middle class family and lives with his parents and two younger brothers. His days used to be filled with school, small arguments over toys, and the kind of laughter that echoes in every corner of a home. But everything changed the day the doctors gave his family the news: “Ali had leukemia.”

The moment they heard it, it was too heavy to carry. His mother, who had always been the heart of the home, clutched her scarf so tightly that her fingers turned white. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, filled with tears she could not hold back. “Leukemia,” the doctor said, and for her, the word had no meaning at first only a wave of shock, fear, and helplessness. Ali’s father sat silently, jaw tight, as if trying to hold back an overwhelming tide of panic. Their younger children, sensing something was wrong but not understanding what, looked on with confusion and worry.

For Ali, the word “cancer” didn’t make sense. He noticed that his parents were quiet in a way they had never been before. He noticed the tiredness in his mother’s eyes, the worry in his father’s face. He didn’t yet understand that his frequent bruises and nosebleeds were part of something much bigger. All he knew was that something had changed, and he could feel it in the way his parents looked at him, their hands trembling as they held his.

The days after the diagnosis were heavy. Hospital visits began in quick succession blood tests, bone marrow biopsies, chemotherapy consultations. Ali’s mother moved like a shadow through their home, exhausted, her eyes red from crying quietly when no one was watching. Nights were the hardest. She would sit beside Ali’s bed, brushing his hair back, whispering softly, “It’s going to be okay,” even though she wasn’t sure if it would be. Ali, sensing her worry, would squeeze her hand tightly, offering his own small reassurance in return.

Ali’s younger brothers felt the weight of the illness too, even if they could not yet understand it. They missed the carefree days when Ali’s presence meant laughter and games, not hospital visits and whispered fears. Sometimes, they would peek into his hospital room, and just watching him lie there, pale and quiet, seemed enough to make the world feel heavier.

What struck me about Ali’s family is there were only quiet moments of small courage, tiny hope. A hug after a particularly difficult day, a bedtime story read despite the exhaustion these were the threads that held them together.

The hospital staff became part of their lives, helping them navigate the frightening and unfamiliar world of pediatric cancer. Nurses would gently hold Ali’s hand during blood draws; doctors patiently explained each step of treatment. Social workers tried to ease the emotional load on a family suddenly burdened with fear, uncertainty, and financial strain. Still, despite the care, there was no denying the profound pain of watching a child suffer.

Ali’s story is about ordinary people facing an extraordinary situation. It is about a mother who cries quietly in the night, a father who wrestles with feelings of helplessness, and siblings trying to hold onto some sense of normalcy. It is about living with uncertainty every day and still trying to go through it.  

Even in the midst of hardship, hope persists in the smallest ways. Ali smiles when he sees his favorite cartoon, laughs quietly when his younger brothers climb into bed with him, and grips his mother’s hand during hospital procedures. Ali’s journey has just begun, and the road ahead is uncertain. But his story is a reminder of what childhood cancer truly looks like, the quiet struggles, the subtle victories, and the faint lights of hope that families cling to when the world feels impossibly heavy.

For every parent, sibling, or caregiver reading this, Ali’s story reflects human resilience in its quietest form. It is about showing up, even when you are afraid, even when you feel powerless, and finding strength in the small, ordinary ways we care for the ones we love.

Prayers for Ali and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen

Note: “The child’s name has been changed to protect privacy, and the accompanying image is AI-generated.”

Warriors and Survivors - 247

Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 247

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

Three Year Old Rayan and the Weight of Words No Parent Is Ready to Carry

Rayan is three years old.

At an age when his world should revolve around toy cars, bedtime stories, and the comfort of his parents’ arms, Rayan now spends his days inside the walls of a children’s hospital. The beeping of monitors has replaced the laughter of playgrounds. Needles, masks, and unfamiliar faces have become part of his routine. Just weeks ago, Rayan was diagnosed with leukemia.

For most people, the word cancer is heavy. For parents, it is devastating. For the parents of a three-year-old child, it is unbearable.

Rayan comes from a middle class family one of millions who work hard, live modestly, and stretch every rupee carefully. His parents are educated. They read. They ask questions. They try to understand. And yet, despite their education, they are drowning in a sea of medical terminology that feels impossible to navigate.

“Acute,” “malignancy,” “bone marrow,” “chemotherapy,” “remission,” “relapse.”

These are not just words. They are loaded with fear, uncertainty, and trauma. They arrive abruptly, spoken in calm clinical tones that contrast sharply with the chaos they unleash inside a parent’s heart. Education does not shield you from fear when the diagnosis concerns your child. Literacy does not soften the blow of hearing that your baby’s life now depends on test results, response curves, and survival statistics.

Rayan’s parents sit across from doctors, nodding as explanations unfold, trying desperately to absorb information while their minds scream the same question again and again: Will our child survive?

There is a unique cruelty in pediatric cancer. Children do not understand why they hurt. They do not know why they are confined to hospital rooms or why their parents cry quietly when they think no one is watching. Rayan does not know what leukemia is. He only knows that his parents are anxious, that strangers poke him with needles, and that home feels far away.

And yet, amid all this, Rayan smiles.

He smiles at nurses who call him brave. He smiles when his parents read him stories from worn-out books they brought from home. He smiles even when his body is tired because children, in their innocence, often show resilience that adults struggle to comprehend.

For his parents, however, resilience comes at a cost.

They worry constantly not only about Rayan’s health, but about finances, time off work, transportation, and the invisible bills that accumulate silently. Middle class families often fall into a painful gap, earning too much to qualify for extensive assistance, yet not enough to absorb prolonged medical expenses without strain. Every decision becomes layered with stress, guilt, and fear.

But beyond finances, the emotional burden is the heaviest.

Cancer steals certainty. It robs parents of the ability to plan, to imagine birthdays, school days, and futures without hesitation. Life becomes divided into cycles of treatment, lab results, and waiting. Endless waiting.

What makes this journey even harder is how isolating it can feel. Friends and family want to help but often don’t know how. Conversations become awkward. Words feel inadequate. Some people disappear not out of cruelty, but because they don’t know how to face such pain.

And so Rayan’s parents learn to carry this quietly. They learn a new language they never asked to speak. They learn how to be strong while feeling shattered inside. They learn how to advocate for their child in a system that can feel overwhelming even to the most prepared.

Rayan’s story is not unique but that does not make it any less important.

It reminds us that behind every diagnosis is a family struggling to understand, to cope, and to survive emotionally alongside their child. It reminds us that cancer is not just a medical condition; it is a deeply human experience that affects entire families, especially the smallest and most vulnerable among us.

Rayan is three years old. He is not a case number or a diagnosis. He is a child who deserves compassion, gentleness, and hope.

And his parents deserve support not just medically, but emotionally and socially as they walk this path they never chose.

If nothing else, let Rayan’s story remind us to be kinder, more patient, and more present. Because sometimes, the greatest help we can offer is simply to acknowledge the weight others are carrying and to stand with them in it.

Prayers for Ryan and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen

Note: “The child’s name has been changed to protect privacy, and the accompanying image is AI-generated.”

Warriors and Survivors - 246

Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 246

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

Arfa is six years old, an age that usually belongs to scraped knees, half finished coloring books, and loud disagreements over whose turn it is to sit by the window. Until recently, her world looked exactly like that. She lives in Sialkot with her parents and two younger brothers, in a home that was full in the ordinary way school bags by the door, small shoes scattered without pattern, and the soft noise of daily life continuing without much thought.

The first signs that something was wrong did not arrive all at once. They came quietly, in ways that were easy to explain away. Arfa began to feel tired more often. She would sit down during playtime, resting her head against her mother’s arm, asking to be carried even on short walks. There were fevers that came and went, not high enough to alarm, but frequent enough to leave her parents uneasy. Bruises appeared on her arms and legs, darker than expected, lingering longer than they should have. Her appetite faded, and the brightness that once followed her through the house dulled slightly, like a light turned down rather than off.

At first, everyone thought it was a phase. A seasonal illness. The strain of school. In families, especially those raising young children, reassurance often feels more practical than worry. But as days passed, Arfa’s fatigue deepened. She slept more and spoke less. When she complained of bone pain, especially in her legs, her mother felt a quiet fear that did not yet have words.

The hospital visit was meant to bring relief. Tests, the family believed, would give a simple explanation and a simple treatment. Instead, the diagnosis arrived with unfamiliar terms and measured voices: B-cell leukemia. For Arfa, the words meant nothing. She focused on the cold stethoscope and the nurse who smiled kindly. For her parents, those words split time into a before and an after.

Shock does not always look dramatic. In Arfa’s family, it looked like silence. Her father asked the doctor to repeat himself, not because he didn’t hear, but because hearing again felt like delaying the truth. Her mother nodded through explanations she barely absorbed, her thoughts fixed on one impossible question: how could something so serious be living inside a child who still asked for bedtime stories?

Telling the rest of the family was harder than hearing it the first time. Grandparents sat quietly, hands folded, as if movement might disturb the fragile balance of the moment. Arfa’s younger brothers sensed the change without understanding it. They noticed whispered conversations, the sudden seriousness of adults, the way their sister was watched more closely now. They asked why she was going to the hospital so often and why their parents looked quiet.

Grief entered the household not as loud crying, but as small losses accumulating day by day. The loss of routine. The loss of certainty. The loss of a future that had once seemed predictable. School mornings were replaced with hospital corridors. Playdates were postponed indefinitely. Conversations shifted from plans and celebrations to test results and treatment schedules.

Fear of the future settled in quietly. It appeared in the long pauses after doctors’ visits, in the careful budgeting of emotions as much as finances, and in the way Arfa’s parents began to measure time differently, not in months or years, but in cycles of treatment and next appointments. They feared pain they could not prevent, questions they could not yet answer, and outcomes they could not control.

And yet, life did not stop completely. Arfa still laughed at silly jokes. She still argued gently with her brothers over toys. Sometimes, in the middle of it all, she asked simple questions like when she could go back to school, whether her hair would grow again, if she could still wear her favorite dress. These moments did not erase the fear, but they softened it, reminding everyone that illness had entered her life, not replaced it.

Arfa’s story is not uncommon. It is a story of a family learning to live with uncertainty, of ordinary days reshaped by an unexpected diagnosis. It is about quiet resilience found in routine care, in holding hands during blood tests, and in believing gently, carefully that tomorrow is still worth imagining, even when it looks different than before.

Prayers for Arfa and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen

Warriors and Survivors - 245

 Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 245

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

Waqar’s Story: A Childhood Measured in Transfusions, Not Time

Waqar is ten years old. When he laughs quietly, sometimes shyly, you might not guess what lies beneath the surface of that smile. You wouldn’t know, at first glance, that his life has been woven through hospital corridors, needles, and blood bags since infancy; that every two to three weeks he sits in a chair while nurses gently insert a needle into his veins to give him life-saving blood. His is not a story of heroic feats or dramatic rescues, but a deeply human one: the slow, heartfelt persistence of a child living with beta-thalassemia major: and a family trying to keep him alive.

What Is Beta-Thalassemia Major

Beta-thalassemia major is an inherited blood disorder that affects hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to the body’s tissues. In children with this condition, the body cannot produce enough functional hemoglobin, leading to severe anemia, weakness, fatigue, and low energy. Without regular blood transfusions, the body literally starves for oxygen, and vital organs struggle to function. As Waqar’s parents describe it, “his body wears out faster than other kids’” because his blood can’t carry the life force his heart and brain need. Symptoms often include severe fatigue, jaundice (yellowing of skin), poor growth, and frequent infections. Over time, complications such as enlarged spleen, bone changes, and iron overload affecting the heart and liver can occur unless managed carefully. 

A Burden Felt Across Asia and Deeply in Pakistan

In Asia, especially the subcontinent, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East, inherited blood disorders like beta-thalassemia are significantly more common than in many Western countries. A large proportion of global births affected by this disorder occur in these regions. 

Pakistan, with a population exceeding 225 million people, carries the high burdens of beta-thalassemia. An estimated 5–7% of the population are carriers of the beta-thalassemia gene more than 10 million people and every year about 5,000 children are born with the major form of the disease that demands lifelong management.

Many families do not know their genetic carrier status until a child is diagnosed. Cultural factors such as consanguineous (cousin) marriages, limited awareness, and scarce access to screening and prenatal counseling further contribute to the number of affected births. 

Life With and Without Treatment

For children like Waqar, the engine that keeps their body working is regular blood transfusion often every few weeks. Each transfusion helps fill the gap that his bone marrow cannot, boosting hemoglobin levels enough to keep him active and out of acute crisis. Alongside transfusions, iron chelation therapy is given to prevent excess iron from building up in organs (a side-effect of receiving blood repeatedly).

But consistent access to safe blood and chelation medicine is not a given. In Pakistan and many parts of South Asia, families often travel long distances to find properly screened and compatible blood, sometimes waiting hours in overcrowded centers. The financial cost, roughly thousands of Pakistani rupees each month for medicine and supplies is beyond reach for many families struggling to make ends meet. 

If a child without treatment could survive infancy, the body’s chronic anemia would lead to failure of multiple organs, dangerously low oxygen delivery to the heart and brain, and early death often before adolescence. With treatment, children like Waqar can survive into adulthood, but the quality of life is shaped by how dependable and comprehensive their medical care is.

The Family Behind the Child

Waqar’s mother recalls when he was diagnosed around his first birthday: “I remember holding him, so small, and feeling like the world had shifted.” It was the beginning of an unchosen routine: doctors’ visits, blood tests, transfusions, and an ever-present worry over infections or complications.

Their days are calibrated by waiting room chairs, the lull of hospital fans, and budgets spent on medicine instead of school supplies. Siblings learn early not to complain about minor injuries because their brother’s bare veins are already familiar with needles. Financial strain, emotional exhaustion, and the constant fear of something going wrong are not abstract concerns they are daily realities.

In communities where stigma and misunderstanding about thalassemia persist, families also wrestle with social isolation and lack of understanding. Some parents hesitate to talk openly about the disease, worried it will affect their child’s future opportunities or social acceptance. 

A Quiet Call for Awareness

There are medical efforts to expand carrier screening, premarital counseling, and community awareness, but implementation is uneven and limited. Prevention strategies including genetic counseling and prenatal diagnosis can significantly reduce the number of children born with beta-thalassemia major, but these services are often confined to urban centers and are unaffordable or unknown to many families. 

What Waqar’s story highlights is not just the clinical profile of a genetic disease, but the lived experience of a child and his family navigating a chronic condition in a resource limited context. It is a story that invites both empathy and action reminding us that behind every statistic is a beating heart, a family budget, and dreams for a future beyond transfusion chairs.

In Waqar’s eyes, when he is not tired, when he plays tag with his cousins, when he insists on reading aloud at bedtime, there is a simple truth: he is a child first, deserving of care, hope, and the possibility that one day, treatment and prevention will be not a luxury but a right for every family facing thalassemia.

Prayers for Waqar and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen

Warriors and Survivors - 244

Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 244

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have worked in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital. The mission of this blog is to bring to you the real-life stories of child patients suffering from cancer. Cancer is still a difficult disease to handle and treat. However, when it strikes the children, some so young that they cannot even speak, their agony is beyond expression and words. Let us pray especially for children suffering from cancer for early and complete remission. May Allah shower His Merciful Blessings upon them. Aameen. 

Zohran was seven, small for his age, with a quiet curiosity that often made him linger a little longer under the sun when other children had gone home. He lives in a tiny village, where the earth smells of wet clay after rain and the days are measured by the crowing of roosters and the rhythmic hum of the river nearby. His house is modest, rooms with cracked walls and open corridors. Life is simple, and yet it is full for Zohran, full of the small adventures that children of his age often take for granted.

Lately, however, things began to change. Zohran finds himself getting tired more easily. Walking to school felt like trudging through mud even when the path is dry. His small hands, once quick to chase kites and catch sparrows, now trembles when he tried to hold his pencils steady. His mother noticed the bruises that appeared on his skin for no reason she could understand, and the nights when he would cough quietly in the dark, trying not to wake anyone.

His father, a man of few words who spent his days in the fields, tries to remain hopeful. He would tell Zohran to eat more, to sleep more, to take care of himself. But he, too, carrying a quiet worry, the kind that grows heavy in the chest and sits there, wordless, waiting. They had heard whispers in the village about strange illnesses, about children falling ill for no reason, but the words never had names. They don’t know the language of disease; they only knew fear and confusion.

The day they brought Zohran to the hospital, he didn’t really understand why he had to leave the village, why the white walls and bright lights felt so different from the soft earth of home. He clutched his mother’s hand, his small fingers gripping tightly, and asked quietly if he had done something wrong. She smiled softly, trying to mask her own worry, and shook her head. “No, beta, nothing is your fault,” she whispered. But even as she said it, she could feel the unfamiliar weight of uncertainty pressing against her chest.

In the hospital, the words came slowly, in a language that felt strange and heavy. “B-cell leukemia,” the doctor said, as if that explained everything, but it did not. To Zohran, it sounded like a spell from one of his storybooks, something distant, not real. To his parents, it was a word that carried the weight of a future they could not predict. Chemotherapy, blood tests, transfusions,  all of it was a rhythm that they had to follow without truly understanding, a dance of hope and fear.

The treatment days were long and quiet. Zohran spent hours sitting by the window, watching the birds outside, wishing to be among them again. He missed the smell of wet clay, the laughter of the children running barefoot along the dusty lanes. His small body bore the weight of the medicine, his energy slowly ebbing away. Some days, he would sit with his mother as she combed his hair, her hands trembling, trying not to cry. Other days, he would ask his father to tell him stories of the village, of the river and the trees, anything that could take him back to a world that still felt safe.

His parents are facing their own battles. They never imagined they will have to navigate hospitals, treatments, and medical jargon. Money was scarce, every trip to the city felt like a risk to their fragile savings. The neighbors whispered, some with sympathy, some with fear, but in their hearts, Zohran’s parents carrying the heaviest burden. They have to stay strong for him, to smile even when their own hearts aching, to make decisions about a future they can not predict.

Even so, in the quiet corners of the hospital, there were moments of tenderness. Zohran’s laughter, soft and fleeting, could light up a room. His curiosity, though dampened by fatigue, still peeking out in small ways a question about the clouds, a fascination with the shapes of the trees outside, a wonder at the colors of his medicine. His parents learning to celebrate small victories: a day without fever, a smile after a difficult treatment, a moment when he reached out to hold their hands without fear.

In the evenings, they sit together, holding each other’s hands in the dim light, finding comfort not in understanding everything, but in being together. The world outside is uncertain, sometimes harsh, but in those quiet moments, there is a fragile, enduring hope. Zohran do not fully understand what is happening to him, and his parents do not fully know what the future hold. Yet, amidst the fear and exhaustion, there is love patience, steadfast, and quietly fierce binding them together like the roots of a tree that refuse to break even in the strongest wind.

And so, their days continues, one at a time, carrying the weight of uncertainty with gentle courage, finding small moments of joy and connection in a world that had suddenly become so much bigger and stranger than the one they knew before.

Prayers for Zohran and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen