Two Days to Live

my name is ferrari khan

in your eyes i might look like a normal

12 year old

child however almost two years ago

i went through a journey that taught me

how precious life is

i was always the healthy kid i had a lot

of after-school activities such as

karate

sailing swimming guitar lessons on some

afternoons i would ride my bike

i lived a normal life with a normal

family on top of hill

called todman’s peak we also had a cat i

sometimes referred to as my brother

called winter

this was around late april and my school

had an exhibition project to do

i was put in a group with my friends and

the theme was

life on land so we would volunteer at

the humane society

to help out the animals we literally

fell in love with the animals there

even after the exhibition we went to the

humane society

to hang out i think it

was around a thursday night and i

realized

there was a pain in my right knee

so i go to karate injuries are common

so so what i will usually do is i’ll go

to bed and sleep it out

however the next morning that wasn’t the

case the pain was still there

i still went to school though and i did

not have to call my parents to come and

pick me up

but as the days went by the pain only

got worse

it even spread to my knee and my hip

someday that week i went to my

grandparents house for dinner

my grandma then said i was getting pale

so that weekend my parents took me to

the doctors

they ordered a blood test and the

results what you usually expect in a

normal

11 year old my age at the time however

that information the pain didn’t stop it

got worse

now it spread to my right kidney

this was around early may now and the

video game battlefield 1 had just came

out

me being an outside person i

surprisingly even liked the game

i’ll play at my grandma’s house and when

my cousin came home from school

he would play with me and at home

i would lay on a chair with my cat

winter he knew something was wrong

the next weekend the pain still began to

get worse

and my parents took me to the doctors

again

they ordered another blood test this

time

it was different my white blood cells

were

skyrocketing and my hemoglobin

and my platelets were sinking indicating

that i have a dis

infection for those reasons and for

blood tests

imaging tests and fever i was admitted

to bougainvillea hospital

on the imaging tests they found that

there was a lesion

in my right kidney and my liver was

inflamed

my diagnosis wilm’s tumor a disease that

affects toddlers after four days

they decided to medically evacuate me to

miami

the way how that works is an ambulance

comes to my hospital

they take me on a stretcher to the

ambulance and they drive me to the

airport

that drive was not like a drive in the

park that drive was more like

a hammock and a tornado yeah that better

suits it

when i arrived to the airport i had my

own private plane to take

my parents and i to

miami i always wanted my own private

plane

not like this one though i always wanted

my own glass of cider apple being my

favorite

this time i had my own bag of fluids and

painkillers

by the time i reached the hospital i was

already screaming

in pain i was i was told if i was two

days late

i could have been no more

finally for the first time in weeks i

got to relax

with the help of morphine painkiller

the doctors were ordered to do a surgery

to remove

my right kidney but they decided to do

some more blood tests and imaging tests

thank god they did that because they

realized

it wasn’t wilm’s tumor it was actually

non-hodgkin’s burkitt’s leukemia stage

four

a very aggressive cancer in fact one of

the

most fastest spreading cancer

due to the amount of abnormal cells in

my body

found on the lumbar punctures the

disease

will be half the treated will have to be

treated with equally

aggressive chemotherapy my protocol was

drafted

over seven cycles to last nine months

during my treatment if i were to say

which one was

my hardest one to take on it would

definitely be

the first one because on the first one

which is also known as pre-phase

i had all the side effects imaginable

sometimes on some days i didn’t have

the strength to even sit up to eat my

own food

and the seventh one i was suffering from

homesickness

anxiety and insomnia i couldn’t even

call my relatives and my grandparents

back here in the bvi

because i would start crying and how

much did i miss them

during my treatment you could imagine

how much

i missed the me and my friends

at the humane society me and my cat

battlefield 1 my relatives birthday

parties

instead of being there i was in a

hospital in a cold room fighting for my

life

i was always interested in the evolution

of earth and very curious

of life

being so critically ill made me realize

how precious life is

now this is what i learned from my

ordeal thus far

one the unarguable fact that life is a

blessing

and two i made a lot of friends

receiving treatment the same time as we

in the hospital

we sat ate lunch together we played

xbox nintendo switch and this

and those same people some of them sadly

did not make it

this is why i want to talk about

children fighting cancer

finally the date january 10

2018 is a date i would never forget

because on that date i returned

back here to the bvi i was so glad

when the warm bvi breeze hit me

back when i returned here i was so eager

to start back school again

and when i finally did back in the swing

of things i was supposed to do a science

project

i’m a scientist of my choice so i chose

dr jane goodall a

primatologist and an anthropologist

not long after that i learned about the

jane goodall

roots and shoots program it’s a global

organization

and i thought that would be a good idea

to have one here in the bvi

as you may imagine i kept in touch with

my doctors

i told them that i wanted to start one

here in the bvi

they were very proud of me and my

parents were also very proud of me too

so they did the only logical thing

they did all the paperwork and it got

approved by the government

roots and shoots bvi is now a non-profit

profit organization that organizes

youth-led programs helping people

animals and the environment here in the

bvi

so far we them

so far we carried out projects to make

kindness

new cool in schools take part in

environmental projects like planting

trees on school campuses

raising awareness for bvi cancer society

and the humane society

two charities which are very close to my

heart

we also held a game changer next that’s

unplugged to reconnect

in order to bring back family time and

to move away from the electronic screens

these are all projects overseen by

adults

but they were designed and executed by

youths

let me tell you something you don’t have

to go through what i have been through

in order to realize how much help this

world needs

for me i am glad to be alive

and i want to give back to the people

who selflessly

took their time to make me feel better

i can’t wait to pay it forward when i

grow up when i grow up

i want to be a pediatric

hematologist oncologist a doctor who

specializes

in kids with blood cancer

the time is now to do this the time is

now to help the environment

the time is now to help people the time

is now to realize

that animals are being abused

and they’re going they’re going to be

driven to extinction

and we are the ones who have the power

to help them

i would like to end my speech with a

quote

you cannot get through a single day

without having an impact on the world

around you

what you do makes a difference and it’s

up to you to decide what difference

you want to make by dr jane goodall

thank you