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Most children grow up with dreams. Some imagine becoming athletes, doctors, artists, or leaders. I used to build robots from cardboard and spaceships from Legos because I wanted to become an astronaut. But for some children, cancer suddenly interrupts those dreams.
Cancer treatment does more than attack a disease. It can also take away school, friendships, routines, freedom, and the simple experiences that make childhood feel normal. A child may spend weeks or months inside a hospital room, surrounded by machines, medications, and repeated treatments.
Hospitals work hard to save lives, but survival should not be the only measure of success. Children in long-term cancer treatment also deserve comfort, connection, play, and moments of joy.
In many pediatric oncology units, the routine becomes treatment, rest, and more treatment. Children may receive tablets or television for entertainment, but screens cannot replace real interactions. A nine-year-old undergoing chemotherapy still needs to feel like a nine-year-old. Children need opportunities to laugh, create, move, make friends, and experience something beyond their diagnosis.
Hospital leaders should create structured, medically supervised activities that bring childhood into the treatment center. These could include indoor camping nights using hospital blankets, art and sculpture workshops, music sessions, adapted physical games, storytelling events, and small-group activities.
Programs should also help children connect with other patients. Long hospital stays can feel deeply isolating. Meeting another child facing the same fears can provide comfort that a screen cannot.
Some people may argue that these activities could be unsafe because chemotherapy weakens the immune system and leaves children physically vulnerable. Safety must always come first. Infection-control rules, medical limitations, and each child’s energy level should be respected.
However, safety should guide these programs, not prevent them. Doctors, nurses, child-life specialists, and therapists can design activities that match each patient’s medical needs. Activities can be modified, supervised, and offered only when a child is healthy enough to participate.
The greater danger is allowing fear to reduce a child’s entire world to a bed and a screen. A weak body does not mean a child has stopped needing friendship, creativity, movement, or hope. Children enduring needles, scans, and difficult side effects should not also be expected to give up the parts of life that remind them who they are.
Hospital directors have the power to make this change, and parents have the right to ask for it. Treatment centers should measure more than medical outcomes. They should also ask whether a child smiled, made a friend, learned something new, or forgot about cancer for a few minutes.
Beating cancer is the most important goal. But helping children live while they fight it matters too. A hospital should not only treat the illness shown on a scan. It should care for the whole child and protect every child’s right to keep dreaming.
Disclaimer: The opinions and views expressed in this article/column are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of South Asian Herald.
