Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 220
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.
A Silence Too Heavy – Wareesha’s Fight Against Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma
There are days when words come easily, and then there are days like today—when I sit in front of a blank screen, knowing I must write about a child whose suffering feels too immense to put into sentences. Today’s story is about Wareesha, an 11-year-old girl from a small town called Buray Wala. She’s facing something that no child should ever have to know: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma, a rare and aggressive cancer growing in the upper part of her throat behind the nose.
Her story is quiet, it’s a slow, difficult silence—a silence that fills a room when her mother watches her sleep through pain. A silence that hovers when the doctor enters the ward with scan results. A silence that feels unbearable when you're 11 years old and can't swallow without discomfort and can't breathe clearly through your nose anymore.
Wareesha used to be a student who never missed school. Her teachers say she was shy but sharp, the kind of child who would quietly help a classmate with homework or clean up without being asked. That was before her headaches began. At first, her parents thought it was just a flu that wouldn’t go away. Then came the nosebleeds. Then the swelling in her neck. By the time they reached a hospital in Multan, she had already lost several pounds and was having trouble hearing from one ear.
A biopsy confirmed what they feared but didn’t yet understand, “Nasopharyngeal carcinoma” a cancer rarely seen in children, particularly in rural Pakistan. The doctors explained that it tends to be diagnosed late because its symptoms mimic common illnesses: ear infections, allergies, sore throats. But this wasn’t something common. This was cancer, and it had already begun to invade.
For most of us, it’s hard to imagine what cancer looks like in a child. We think of tubes, of shaved heads, of quiet hospital rooms. But what I saw in Wareesha’s eyes was more than that. It was confusion—about why she had to stop going to school, why the other kids could play outside while she lay in a hospital bed. Why food didn’t taste like anything anymore. Why she had to hold her mother’s hand so tightly just to walk down the hallway.
Wareesha is currently undergoing chemotherapy, a procedure she neither understands nor welcomes, but endures with more patience than most adults could muster. There are days her throat is so sore she can’t even whisper. Yet when her younger brother visits, she forces a smile and asks if he’s done his homework. That’s Wareesha—still thinking of others even while her own world is quietly collapsing.
Her parents have sold most of what they own to afford her treatment. Her father, a seasonal laborer, now lives part-time in Lahore just to be near the oncology unit. Her mother stays by her bedside. They don’t complain. They don't beg. But you can see the fear sitting quietly behind their eyes.
There is something unbearably unjust about pediatric cancer. It interrupts dreams before they’ve had a chance to form. It turns bedtime stories into whispered prayers. It replaces laughter with IV drips and chemo schedules. But Wareesha’s story is also a reminder of the hope that exists in the most fragile of bodies. The dignity in small endurance. The courage of children who don’t even know what courage means.
I don’t have an ending for this story—not yet. Wareesha is still in treatment. Her prognosis depends on many things: how the tumor responds to treatment, whether her body can handle the side effects, whether her family can continue to afford the medical care she needs. But she’s fighting, quietly, bravely, every single day.
If you're reading this, I ask only one thing—remember Wareesha in your prayers. Not as a statistic or a case report, but as a real 11-year-old girl who once loved to read, who now fights to breathe. Her story matters. And maybe if we keep telling it, the silence will start to break.
Prayers for the Wareesha and all the sick children and their families who have to face this pain of cancer. May Allah make it easy for them. Aameen
