Warriors and Survivors - Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 225

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. 

Abdullah doesn’t talk much these days. He never really talked a lot before either, only enough to tell his mother when he was hungry, or to ask for his favorite red car that had gone missing under the sofa. Now, even those small requests have become rare.

At just four years old, Abdullah has been diagnosed with Pre B-cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), a term far too long and heavy for someone so small. He doesn’t know what it means. He only knows that hospitals smell strange, the lights are always too bright, and the little pricks in his arm make him cry not because of pain, but because he’s tired of being held down.

What hurts the most is the confusion. Abdullah doesn't have the words to explain what he's feeling fatigue that turns into tantrums, discomfort that becomes silence, and fear that hides behind his big eyes. For a child who hasn't yet learned to name emotions, this journey is lonely in a way that even adults around him struggle to understand.

His mother, Amina, stays by his side. She hasn’t returned to her stitching work for weeks, though clients still call. The family’s second income is paused indefinitely. Abdullah’s father, Imran, divides his time between hospital visits, managing two shifts at a garment factory, and making sure his other children are fed and safe at home. They haven’t sat together as a family in days. They eat in turns now. Conversations revolve around test results, travel to the hospital, and how to pay for tomorrow’s blood work.

At the cancer ward, there are no grand declarations of strength. Only quiet negotiations: with pain, with time, with finances. Treatment brings hope, yes but also exhaustion. Some days, Amina watches Abdullah sleep and wonders whether he dreams of his old toys, or if those too have begun to fade from memory.

There are small joys that persist. Abdullah sometimes smiles when a nurse offers him a sticker, or when another child waves from across the room. He still smiles when he sees mango slices his favorite treat, though now he’s too nauseous to eat more than a bite. These moments are delicate and brief, but they are real. They don’t scream of victory, nor do they deny the struggle. They simply exist like Abdullah, quietly trying to make sense of a world that suddenly changed without asking him.

In many ways, Abdullah is like thousands of children in Pakistan who are diagnosed with cancer too young to understand but forced to endure. And his parents, like many others, navigate a daily equation that never seems to balance time, money, care, survival.

There is no ribbon-wrapped ending to this week’s story. Only a pause a space to see Abdullah, to sit with his silence, and to remember that sometimes the hardest part of childhood illness is not the pain, but the isolation of not knowing how to speak about it.

And yet, even in silence, Abdullah is present. Watching. Feeling. Waiting.

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