I’m alive today thanks to strangers who don’t even know my name

Why me? Why you? Why anyone? The question of “why” circled endlessly in my mind. When my life changed forever, I wondered why I was chosen from just 0.03 per cent of Australians.

My life was simple, perfect, and sometimes even boring. I lived my life day by day, never imagining that my “normal” was about to be lost.

After school on Friday, my parents saw the exhaustion written over my face. The paleness of my skin appeared cold and the darkness took over my eyes. It was dinner and straight to bed, they told me. The next morning they took me for a blood test, fearing that it might be low iron at worst. But deep down I wished it was nothing at all. As redness was drawn out of me, the sting from the prick remained so vividly in my mind, the first of many hundreds to come.

Just four hours later, we were shocked to see our GP at the front door. She looked pensive and spoke calmly, “I’ve been trying to call you. You need to go to Sydney Children’s Hospital immediately. They are waiting for you”.

We quickly gathered our things and flew out the door to be met by a team of professionals. Within what seemed like moments, we were delivered the news by a tall man in a suit, “I hope I am wrong, but I know I am right. Your daughter has leukaemia”.

My heart dropped. I could hear the rapid beats. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. It was like a truck had run over my heart. I stood there frozen in time, confused and disengaged. Although my parents didn’t admit it, I knew that this was harder for them. I watched a singular tear flow down my mum’s cheek, before others joined the race.

Cancer is a word that is scarier than it sounds. Only six letters, yet a word that everyone fears as it creeps uninvited into people’s lives. It does not ask permission, it does not care who you are, it simply walks right into your life and changes it forever. I didn’t know it yet, but the intense years that followed, with endless blood tests, transfusions, medicines, overnight hospital stays, and surgeries, would all be endurable because of cancer research.

For me, cancer wasn’t just a disease. It was infinite time; time waiting in silence, time hearing nothing but my heartbeat, time under bright white hospital lights, time breathing tangy, antiseptic wafts. A pause in time.

I entered this netherworld in these moments, mastering the art of waiting and noticing the little things that slowly became my new normal. The way my mum never let go of my hand, the steady beeping of machines, my dad’s continual “dad jokes” and the sad eyes of visitors walking by. Cancer has a way of bringing you firmly into the present. But all the while I could not help but wonder… …why me?

I slowly realised that the question was never “Why me?” but “Why them?” Why would people I haven’t even met choose to help someone like me? A cancer diagnosis isn’t cured by just one doctor; it takes a whole research team, scientists far and wide in laboratories, people dedicating years to finding answers, all too rarely seeing their work in person.

The people who I never met had the biggest impact on my life, not because they had to, but because they chose to. Every sunset I see and every “normal” day I live in is thanks to a stranger in a white coat who doesn’t even know my name.

Ruby Atkinson is a Year 9 student.