Leukaemia? Never a 'full stop'

Ka Yan, from Hong Kong, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia when she was 12, but fought back and recovered.

Mak Ka Yan fell sick with fever and had unexplained bruises when she was 12. Her parents could not figure out why she was falling sick, and took her to hospital to have her sickness checked.

To their dismay, the blood tests showed that Ka Yan’s blood cell counts were low. Following a bone marrow test that was carried out, Dr Anselm Lee diagnosed the girl with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.

Although Ka Yan put on a brave face, it was a tough time for her and her parents.

Much later, she sent Dr Lee an e-mail to share her experience with other cancer patients. In it, she described what she felt when she first heard that she had cancer.

“In the e-mail she sent me, she mentioned that it was a difficult time for her and her family during the first few months when leukaemia was diagnosed,” says Dr Lee, now a Medical Director and Consultant at the Children’s Haematology and Cancer Centre.

Ka Yan received chemotherapy, but this came with side effects. They made her sick, and she had infections. She was also weak, and was dependent on doctors’ and nurses’ help.

Thanks to the support of the doctors and nurses, she was able to stand up again.

She also responded well to the treatment: The leukaemia cells disappeared from her blood and bone marrow within two weeks of treatment, and the brave girl pulled through the first eight months of treatment, despite the fact that it was intensive and at times painful. By the time she entered the second year of treatment, Ka Yan had managed to start going back to school – even though she was still on chemotherapy.

“She did very well in her class,” recalls Dr Lee. “The treatment did not seem to have any adverse effects on her study.”

After the two-year treatment was finished, Ka Yan put even more time into her studies and extra-curricular activities. She became a student leader in school and actively participated in voluntary works. She even won a prize for being an outstanding secondary school student.

Her top results enabled her to go on to university in Hong Kong, where she took up a course to become a social worker.

Today, Ka Yan is a fully registered social worker who does a lot of volunteer work.

“Leukaemia was awful,” she recalls in her e-mail to Dr Lee recently, “but it did nothing but strengthen me. Life is full of punctuation marks, but leukaemia can never be a ‘full-stop’.”