Warriors and Survivors - 215

Warriors and Survivors - Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 215

I am Rukh Yusuf, Clinical Pharmacist, also specialized in Total Parenteral Nutrition and Bone Marrow Transplant. I have been working in the Pediatric Oncology unit of a public hospital for several years. 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. 

"Ali Hassan's Quiet Courage: A Year of Battles from Wazirabad"

Eight months ago, Ali Hassan’s life took a sharp turn.

Thirteen years old, full of quiet mischief and cricket dreams, Ali lived with his family in a modest home tucked in a narrow lane of Wazirabad. His days were ordinary school in the morning, cricket in the afternoon, and helping his younger siblings with homework after dinner. But in September of last year, something changed.

Ali started getting tired more often. At first, his mother thought it was just the heat. Then came the fevers. Bruises appeared on his arms that no one remembered him getting. He began losing weight, and one day, he fainted on the school stairs. That was the day his family took him to a government hospital in Gujranwala.

After two weeks of blood tests, referrals, and confusion, Ali was diagnosed with T-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (T-ALL)—a high-risk type of blood cancer. His parents were told they needed to go to Lahore, over 100 kilometers away, for proper treatment.

The word “cancer” was something his family had only ever heard in hushed TV ads or whispered conversations. No one in the family had dealt with this before. They didn’t know what a port was. Or what induction chemotherapy meant. Or that Ali would be spending more time in hospital beds than in school benches for the next year, maybe longer.

A Family Displaced

In Lahore, Ali was admitted to a pediatric oncology ward. His mother stayed with him. His father, a mechanic, tried to manage between work in Wazirabad and visits to the hospital. They couldn’t afford to rent a room nearby, so for weeks, Ali’s mother slept on a mat under his hospital bed.

Ali’s treatment began with steroids, intravenous chemotherapy, and painful bone marrow tests. He lost his hair in the third week. But that wasn’t what bothered him. “Ammi, I just want to go home. I miss the sound of the fan in our room,” he whispered one night.

Hospital life is a strange universe. Time bends. Daylight barely seeps through windows. Other children come and go—some discharged, some not. There are alarms from IV pumps and coughing from the next bed. In this world, Ali became quieter. He no longer asked for the cricket ball he had brought with him. He no longer argued about homework. But he always asked for chai when the nurse brought it for his mother.

A Life on Pause

Ali’s chemotherapy has now entered its eighth month. His white blood cell counts are still under watch. He’s in the consolidation phase, with occasional infections slowing his progress. His appetite comes and goes. His skin has turned pale. He keeps a notebook where he draws tiny pencil sketches—mostly of his street back home and the tandoor shop on the corner.

His mother tells me, “He doesn’t cry. Not once. But at night, he talks in his sleep. He says, ‘Don’t take me back to the white room.’ I think he means the procedure room.”

What makes Ali’s story stand out is not just the diagnosis—it’s what cancer does to a family already surviving day to day. Cancer, for them, is not a fight with inspiring hashtags. It's rationing the money between antibiotics and bus fare. It’s trying to find a donor for blood at 2 AM because the hospital has run out. It’s a younger sibling left back home asking, “When is bhai coming back?”

Holding On

Ali's family is doing what families do in such times—they’re holding on. His father now borrows a neighbor’s motorbike every weekend to come see him. His teachers send him voice notes with lessons, though Ali rarely listens. His biggest smile in weeks came when a ward volunteer gave him a plastic bat and let him tap a ball across the corridor.

No one knows how long the treatment will last. There are still scans to come, more phases to clear, and always the lurking fear of relapse. But for now, Ali is here. Drawing. Waiting. Healing, in bits.

And sometimes, that's what hope looks like—not a grand victory, but a boy from Wazirabad who quietly survives another day in a hospital ward far from home.

If you're reading this, perhaps you can take a moment to think of families like Ali’s. Their battles are not always visible. But they are real, and they deserve space in our hearts and our conversations.

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