Children Cancer Stories by Rukh Yusuf - Blog # 255
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.
In the pediatric ward of a public hospital in Lahore, mornings begin early. The corridors fill with quiet and heavy footsteps, the low sound of trolley wheels, and parents holding small hands. Among them is eight-year-old Hamza, who has now learned the routine of the hospital almost as well as the nurses do.
A year ago, life looked very different.
Hamza lived with his parents and two younger sisters in a small neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. He was the kind of child who rarely sat still always running outside, chasing a cricket ball with boys from the street, or building imaginary forts from old cardboard boxes. His mother remembers that the first sign something was wrong seemed ordinary at the time. Hamza started coming home from school unusually tired. Then came the fever that didn’t quite go away.
At first, the family treated it the way many families do in places where medical care is expensive and difficult to access. A visit to the neighborhood clinic, a few days of antibiotics, and advice to let the child rest. But the tiredness deepened. Bruises began appearing on his legs without any clear reason. One evening, when Hamza struggled to climb the stairs to their apartment, his father quietly decided they needed a bigger hospital.
After several tests and anxious hours in crowded waiting rooms, the doctors spoke a word the family had never imagined hearing: leukemia.
For Hamza’s parents, the diagnosis did not come with immediate clarity. It came with confusion, fear, and many questions. Cancer was something they had only heard about in distant stories. How could it happen to a child who had been running through the streets just weeks before?
The treatment began quickly. Chemotherapy sessions, blood tests, long hospital days. For Hamza, the hospital slowly became a second world. At first, he was frightened by the machines, the needles, and the unfamiliar environment. But children have a way of adapting to difficult spaces.
He started recognizing the nurses who brought his medications. He learned which window in the ward caught the warmest sunlight in the afternoon. Sometimes he sits there with a small toy car his sister gave him, rolling it back and forth along the windowsill.
Treatment in a developing country brings challenges that extend beyond the illness itself. Medicines are not always easily available. Families often travel long distances to reach specialized hospitals. Hamza’s father, who works as a mechanic, sometimes misses days of work when his son needs hospital visits. His mother spends many nights sitting beside the hospital bed, half-awake, listening to the quiet sounds of the ward.
Yet within those long days, small moments quietly hold the family together.
Hamza still asks about cricket scores. He still laughs when his younger sisters visit and argue about whose turn it is to sit next to him. On good days, when the side effects of treatment ease a little, he draws pictures in a notebook—usually houses, cars, and once in a while a cricket field.
The doctors say his treatment will take time. Leukemia therapy is rarely quick, and the path is rarely straight. Some weeks are encouraging. Others bring new tests, new worries.
But what stands out most is the quiet persistence of ordinary life continuing in as difficult circumstances as seeing your child struggling with cancer.
A mother adjusting her son’s blanket in the hospital bed.
A father carefully organizing receipts for medicines.
An eight-year-old boy asking the nurse if he will be able to play cricket again when he gets better.
Stories like Hamza’s exist in many hospitals across the world. Pediatric cancer is often misunderstood, and many families still believe it cannot be treated. In reality, many childhood cancers including leukemia can be successfully managed when diagnosis and treatment happen early.
Awareness is often the first step toward that possibility.
For Hamza, the journey is still ongoing. His days are measured in treatment cycles, clinic visits, and small steps forward. Yet when he smiles at visitors or quietly watches the sunlight through the hospital window, he looks very much like any other eight-year-old child, simply waiting for the day he can return home, pick up a cricket bat, and run again in the street outside his house.
Prayers for Hamza 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.”
