Cancer Children: The illness kills them - Reports - News

Cancer Children: The illness kills them and their yearning for their mothers exhausts them By Nour Bassmaji Translated by Schadi Semnani "That illness" we call it, as if it were a demon or an evil spirit that would leap up at the mere mention of its name! Although many countries have developed effective treatment for cancer, fear of it still lives in our hearts. Maybe we fear it because of the finite number of treatments which don't even eliminate the possibility of relapse and don't distinguish between the young and the old. So if this disease is to be called a catastrophe when it befalls one of us, how can we possibly describe it when it attacks children? Children don't yet know the meaning of life or of suffering, let alone the feeling of being drown in it. The patience required of these children is a type of patience that not even a saint has; they must enter a struggle whose loss would mean the loss of life itself. In many cases, entry to the hospital is inevitable and unfortunately this is where money comes in to play its despicable role. The family has two options: they can either pay for the treatment or put their child in the free-care unit. The only difference being that the paying unit allows a member of the child's family to remain with him at all times, while the free-care unit only allows for a two-hour daily visit from the child's parents, whatever his age may be. But in the case of infants, mothers are only allowed to visit their child at nursing time! This means that mothers spend their time waiting by the hospital doors to nurse their infants. The reasons given by the hospital as to why they don't allow more visits are the lack of space and the parents' ignorance which may lead to problems. For example, despite the constant warnings against feeding their kids certain foods, many mothers still give their children foods which contain hormones or other such substances which should not be consumed during their treatment. But the outcome is the same: children not only suffer from their illness and from the pain which accompanies it, but they must also live without their mothers in a strange place surrounded by strange people. Imagine a three-year-old suffering child who cannot express his pain and who is constantly receiving injections or is undergoing chemotherapy. His family comes to the hospital to lay him down and soon afterwards, then leave him. So the child asks himself what he has done to deserve this punishment, and of course there is no answer to this question. He finds himself in the midst of crying children and so he joins in crying until exhaustion quiets him and he sits, waiting for God's mercy. A line of fathers also wait for God's mercy at the hospital's doors. If you pass by any children's hospital you will see fathers from everywhere in country, each with a child suffering from a different type of cancer, who don't even have money for rent, waiting at the side of the road for lack of a better place to wait. Advice: don't pass by the children's hospital at one o'clock because it is the time when mothers flock to the doors of the hospital to visit their children. Don't pass by at three o'clock either, because that is the end of visiting hours and you will find a huge number of mothers and fathers leaving the hospital, most of them in horrible states. As for the older children, their illness has stolen their childhood, making them too mature and aware for their age, despite themselves.A phenomenon taking place in these hospitals that causes both astonishment and sadness is that the older children have taken on the role of parents for the younger ones. In one hospital wing, there is Mina, 11 years old and Mustafa, 10 years old who are both sick with leukemia. No one asks anything of them, but they feel that since they are the two oldest they must take on the roles of father and mother for the other children. We can see the children gathering around Mina as if she compensates for the lack of motherly compassion and when one of them cries, Mustafa tries to calm and console him. In that same hospital wing there is also Walid, a four-year-old who is always crying and full of worries. It turns out that his parents live in a different city, so they are not able to visit him every day and so he cries hysterically when visiting time approaches. He is not the only one who suffers from this type of anxiety; all children start to cry because maybe they are afraid their mothers will not come or because they are angry that their parents have left them in the hospital. Every child's stare is fixed on the door in wait for their mothers' arrival. A group of mothers walk in, but Walid's mom isn't among them. Walid frantically runs up and down the hallway until he loses hope of seeing her. A little while later, Mustafa arrives looking for Walid because Walid's mother has arrived. She enters the room in tears and Walid attacks her and hits her as if blaming her for having left him there, then they embrace and continue crying… Every day, Walid has to live through this awful moment. In addition to being sick and being away from their families, many children are also very sad when their hair falls out! They wonder if their soft hair will ever grow out again. They are too young to know the full meaning of life and death, and they don't feel threatened by death, but they worry about their missing hair. These children are little angels, but they are not seen as such by everyone. Some tire of dealing with them with sympathy and tenderness. The work just becomes routine and some doctors are harsh with them. They threaten to prick them with a needle if they don't stand still! Is the fear of injections really what these children need?!?! The administration of treatment is devoid of any regard for the child. When a doctor asks to analyze a child, the nurses don't allow the child to eat or drink until the following day so that they can do the analysis, but the child asks for water and when he is refused, he cries. At times, some doctors, not all, keep the child waiting until one pm. The worst part is that the appointment is sometimes postponed to the next day! And so the child remains thirsty until his next appointment! The hospital does provide medicines and medical care but the children also need psychological help which is partly provided for by the group Smile. They try to entertain them and lighten their hearts with a variety of activities along with clowns which visit them, play with them and put on shows for them. These moments are the only things that put smiles on these children's faces. It's true that the hospital cannot offer more than it does. But the absence of their mothers causes deep anxiety in these children and it is known that anxiety weakens the body and allows for the child's health to deteriorate. The fathers' ignorance along with the harsh treatment of some of the hospital's staff and the absence of their mothers causes the children to be lost in wait for something to somehow get better. So all we wait for is a glimmer of hope for these children who were robbed of the joy of playing, savoring the wind, running through the squares, and we shouldn't deprive them of the simple feeling of their mothers' hand on theirs as they shut their eyes in wait for a better day.

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