Hello, I am Jiya. I am just a simple, ordinary girl from a small, hardworking middle-class family, and until recently, my biggest worries were just my school exams.
I was sitting in the 9th grade, right in the middle of my first unit tests last July, when a sudden, terrifying pain struck my neck. A tumour had quietly grown near my neck, just beneath my ears, and the agony was almost too much to bear.
My worried parents rushed me to our family doctor. After running some tests, she gently told us it was just tuberculosis—something ordinary, nothing to fear. Seeking reassurance, we consulted a specialised TB doctor. He looked at the reports and offered the same comforting words: “Don’t worry, it’s nothing major; it will heal with time.”
For four long months, I held onto that hope. But the pain never faded; instead, it grew fiercer and heavier with each passing day. Twice, the pain became so unbearable that I had to be rushed to the hospital in an emergency. The second time, everything worsened when I began vomiting blood.
The morning after my emergency admission, the doctor looked at my parents and delivered the heavy truth: the tumour wouldn’t respond to medicines anymore; an emergency surgery had to happen immediately. The very next day, I was wheeled into the operating room.
When the biopsy reports arrived after the surgery, our entire world completely shattered into a million pieces. The doctor broke the devastating news to my heartbroken parents: I was suffering from Stage 4 cancer. They were told that I had only a few days left to live.
Yet, even in the darkest corners of that despair, a flicker of hope remained. The doctors began my gruelling battle—round after round of chemotherapy, radiation, and endless hospital nights.
Today, I am fighting cancer every single second, simply because I want to live my life. I want to grow up.
I just want to say one thing from the depths of my soul:
“I am still trying, and I am giving this fight every ounce of strength I have left. Because I want to win... and I will win.”
