Encouraging progress in treating paediatric leukemia

Throughout Children with Leukemia Week our volunteer team visited children in treatment in their hospital rooms. The week-long programme turned the corridors into a celebration with play and art workshops.

The visit was planned together with the hospital's paediatric haematology department. Hygiene rules were repeated before anyone entered the rooms of children with low immunity, and no more than two volunteers were in a room at a time. Where a room could not be entered, workshops were run at the door, from behind the glass partitions.

Over the week 11 volunteers met 64 children. Alongside painting and music workshops, lesson support sessions were held for children who had paused school. Short video messages were recorded for children whose siblings could not come to the hospital.

A note from a volunteer

“A child who did not want to paint on the first day drew the whole team, one by one, on the last. Our work is that simple and that important.”

Two young friends in Kayseri who beat leukemia now tell children with leukemia in the city, and their families, that the illness can be treated.

Ramazan Bozbeşparmak, 24, and Nihat Karadeniz, 25, who developed leukemia in different years and beat it through treatment, now bring hope to sick children and their families.

Visiting children and young people with leukemia both in hospital and at home, they use themselves as the example to show that treatment for this illness ends successfully.

Diagnosed with leukemia at 15, Ramazan Bozbeşparmak said that while he was in his first year of high school he developed bruising, along with bleeding from his gums and nose.

Bozbeşparmak said a blood count was done at the hospital in Develi and, because it came back very low, he was referred to Kayseri, where he was diagnosed with leukemia.

“I thought I would leave the hospital straight away when I first went in; I got out two years later,” said Bozbeşparmak, adding:

“Leukemia has a very hard treatment and the side effects of the drugs are severe. As we tell the families we visit, the first two or three months are very difficult, but the process passes somehow. I finished high school and studied Public Finance at Marmara University. Now I am trying to do something under the LÖSEV roof so that the treatment of the brothers and sisters who have this illness succeeds. Families and children are glad when I meet them. Mothers say their belief that they will beat this illness grows when they see us. Seeing people like me, whose treatment is complete and who have recovered, makes both families and children believe more strongly that they will beat it.”

“I can feel that ache in their eyes”

Nihat Karadeniz said he was diagnosed with leukemia in 2014 while preparing for the university entrance exam.

Saying he had caught flu and that his fatigue did not lift despite the medication he took, Karadeniz said: “It turned out my blood values were low. I was referred to haematology in Kayseri. When the leukemia diagnosis came we did not know what to do; we knew it as a very bad illness. Treatment started in a rush and I began chemotherapy. The doctors and nurses took great care of me at the time. I was researching the illness and asking people around me, and I could not hear a single positive sentence.”

Karadeniz, who attended a LÖSEV seminar in Develi while he was receiving chemotherapy, said he then became a member of the foundation.

Noting that he learned how common the illness is, Karadeniz said:

“Seeing young people who had recovered changed the way I saw the illness. From then on I went to the hospital gladly, believing I could get better. When I visit patients with leukemia I can feel that ache in their eyes. It is the same as what I felt when I learned I had leukemia. Seeing examples of recovery makes people happy. We often make home visits and talk with patients. I want them to know that cancer is a treatable illness.”

From the field

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