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
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