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