Warriors and Survivors - 251

Children's Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf—Blog #251

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. 

Khurram is eight now. Three months ago, his life was all about simple school routine, cricket with his friends outside his home, and evenings spent sharing stories with his parents and siblings. Today, life has changed altogether. Now, life is all about hospital corridors, blood tests, lab reports, and medical jargons that no child should have to learn so early i.e., leukemia, chemotherapy, counts, and recovery.

He belongs to a middle-class family of Gujrat which is a small city in Punjab. The family that had always measured life in practical, small hopeful steps. Khurram is their only son, the center of their life and quiet dreams for the future. 

While witnessing journeys of these children and families, sometimes, a quiet question arises in my mind: what is more difficult for parents, to have an only child facing such a cruel disease, where every hope and every fear rests on one fragile life? Or to have more than one child, and watching the illness of one ripple through the emotional world of all of them, gently reshaping childhood for each of them? 

There is no simple answer, because mostly pain and pain related feelings cannot be described in words.

For parents of an only child, the hospital room can feel overwhelmingly silent. Their entire world seems to narrow into one small bed, one treatment chart, one set of lab reports that determine everything. Every appointment carries the  fear, the weight of future. There are no siblings at home to fill the quiet spaces, no distraction from the constant awareness that all their dreams are tied to this one fragile life. Their love for the only child becomes both their strength and their weakness, tied together by hope that must remain steady even on the most uncertain days.

Yet for families with multiple children, the challenge unfolds differently but no less deeply. When one child is diagnosed with cancer, the illness does not stay confined to hospital walls. It quietly enters the lives of other children as well. They watch routines change; they sense the worry in their parents’ voices. They learn, far earlier than expected, that life can become serious without warning. Birthdays are celebrated softly, school achievements may pass silently. Attention becomes divided, not by choice, but by necessity.

Parents in such families often carry a silent burden of balance,  sitting beside one child in a hospital room while worrying about another waiting at home. They try to protect each child from fear while managing their own. They strive to keep normalcy alive in a home that has been touched by uncertainty. Love, in these homes, stretches across multiple emotional needs, often leaving parents exhausted but still determined as they do not have other choice.

Pediatric cancer, in truth, never belongs to just one child. It gently weaves itself into the emotional life of an entire family. It asks parents to remain strong even when they feel fragile. It asks siblings to understand circumstances that even adults struggle to process. It asks families to hold onto hope while learning to live with unpredictability.

Perhaps the question is not which situation is harder. Perhaps the more meaningful reflection is how we, as a community, can make either path less heavy.

In the end, what matters most is not comparing one hardship to another but responding with compassion to all of them. When communities become more aware, more present, and more willing to support, the burden begins to feel a little lighter. And for families walking through the long and uncertain road of pediatric cancer, even small gestures of understanding can make a difference.

Awareness is not only about understanding disease statistics or treatment protocols. It is about recognizing the quiet emotional realities families live through every day. It is about kindness; it’s about feeling the pain of people around. It is about offering support that is thoughtful rather than purposeful, a kind word, a shared resource, a gesture that reminds parents and children that they are not alone in this journey.

Every child deserves a future shaped by possibility rather than illness. And every effort, no matter how small, brings that future a little closer.

Prayers for Khurram 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.”