Waleed Ahmed, a young 6 year old boy in Class 1 was living in a small house with his parents and two siblings in Kotri, Jamshoro (Sindh). Being the youngest child in his family, he always received special attention from those around him. Waleed would wait impatiently each evening to hear the footsteps of his father, who worked as a salesman in a local ice-cream company,
to greet him with a big hug. Everyone knew that if Waleed is upset, his father knows the secret to cheer up the little boy. But even his father couldn’t do the trick when Waleed started having fever that wouldn’t go away. His condition was misdiagnosed at a local hospital in
Hyderabad as chest infection and he was also prescribed medicine for tuberculosis. The medicine did not help much. However, his parents were truly alarmed to notice a mass on Waleed’s neck. In search of a cure to what ailed their son, the family travelled to Chiniot where Waleed’s maternal grandparents lived.
A local hospital in Faisalabad operated on the mass and sent the sample to Shaukat Khanum Laboratory Collection Centre for analysis. When the results came back, Waleed was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (a type of cancer).
At that moment, his parents felt utter hopelessness as several questions started whirling around in their minds with no answers. Is the treatment even possible, how will they manage to cover the treatment cost even if the treatment is possible, will they lose their son? And at that moment, they made a decision. They would do whatever it takes and travel any number of miles in order to save their boy.
