Fay­ola Fras­er

“Keep fight­ing. Pain is tem­po­rary, but giv­ing up is per­ma­nent.”

At 19 years old, Aamir Khan has al­ready fought a bat­tle that many peo­ple will nev­er have to imag­ine.

The re­served, soft-spo­ken young man from Trinci­ty en­joys things that most teenagers would—lim­ing with his younger broth­ers, play­ing board games, watch­ing ac­tion movies, and nev­er turn­ing down a plate of cur­ry. Khan car­ries him­self with re­mark­able poise, rarely draw­ing at­ten­tion to the scars that changed his life for­ev­er. Be­hind his gen­tle de­meanour is the ex­tra­or­di­nary sto­ry of a child who be­came a young man who sur­vived an ag­gres­sive brain tu­mour, en­dured brain can­cer, re­learned how to walk, talk and eat, and emerged with an un­shak­able de­ter­mi­na­tion that dri­ves him to keep go­ing and in­spires every­one for­tu­nate enough to know him.

Grow­ing up in Trinci­ty as the el­dest of four boys, Khan en­joyed a hap­py, close-knit up­bring­ing and nat­u­ral­ly em­braced the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that came with be­ing the old­est. While he ad­mits that “set­ting the ex­am­ple can some­times be chal­leng­ing,” he trea­sures the bond he shares with his younger broth­ers. Much of their time to­geth­er is spent do­ing what he loves most, play­ing crick­et, board games, foot­ball and hav­ing movie nights. Be­fore ill­ness changed the course of his child­hood, Khan hoped to be a crick­eter, and he was a mem­ber of a crick­et club where he played pri­mar­i­ly as a bats­man, al­though he proud­ly con­sid­ers him­self an all-rounder. To­day, he plays pure­ly for the en­joy­ment of the game, grate­ful sim­ply to en­joy time with his broth­ers.

In May 2016, on a care­free fam­i­ly get­away at a beach re­sort in Ma­yaro, Khan’s or­di­nary child­hood came to a screech­ing halt. With­out warn­ing, he be­gan vom­it­ing blood. His fright­ened par­ents rushed him to hos­pi­tal, where doc­tors di­ag­nosed acid re­flux and pre­scribed run-of-the-mill med­ica­tion to com­bat it. Yet the symp­toms nev­er dis­ap­peared. Months passed with re­peat­ed hos­pi­tal vis­its, se­vere headaches, per­sis­tent vom­it­ing and grow­ing con­cern. Each vis­it brought the same ex­pla­na­tion that it was a gas­tric prob­lem. No one re­alised that some­thing far more trou­bling was qui­et­ly grow­ing in­side the brain of the then-nine-year-old boy.

Two days af­ter his 10th birth­day on De­cem­ber 2, 2016, Khan ex­pe­ri­enced symp­toms that were even more se­vere and not aligned with the gas­tric di­ag­no­sis. Af­ter col­laps­ing at school on the first day of his end-of-term ex­ams, Khan’s par­ents sought an­oth­er med­ical ex­pla­na­tion from his pae­di­a­tri­cian.

Up­on see­ing him on De­cem­ber 5th, his pae­di­a­tri­cian or­dered fur­ther tests, the re­sults of which were dev­as­tat­ing. He was di­ag­nosed with brain can­cer, and a 4.5-cen­time­tre Medul­loblas­toma, an ag­gres­sive tu­mour, was press­ing against his brain stem. Doc­tors told the fam­i­ly that the tu­mour was ex­treme­ly ag­gres­sive and gave Khan on­ly 24 hours to sur­vive un­less emer­gency in­ter­ven­tion be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly. With­in days, sur­geons in­sert­ed a shunt to drain dan­ger­ous flu­id be­fore un­der­tak­ing a gru­elling op­er­a­tion on De­cem­ber 19 to re­move the tu­mour. The surgery, which had a 50% chance of suc­cess and was sup­posed to be six to eight hours, last­ed near­ly ten hours. Out­side the op­er­at­ing the­atre, his par­ents and grand­par­ents wait­ed in ag­o­nis­ing si­lence. Then, the sur­geon emerged and sim­ply gave a thumbs-up. It was a ges­ture Khan’s moth­er says she will nev­er for­get.

Al­though the tu­mour had been re­moved, the surgery left dif­fi­cult con­se­quences. Be­cause of its po­si­tion on the brain stem, doc­tors had to sac­ri­fice del­i­cate nerves to save his life, and Khan had to re­learn al­most every­thing most peo­ple take for grant­ed.

He had to re­learn how to walk, talk, use the bath­room and eat in­de­pen­dent­ly. “I want­ed to give up many times,” Khan re­calls qui­et­ly. “But my fam­i­ly al­ways en­cour­aged me to get bet­ter, and I had to con­tin­ue to push my­self.”

Re­cov­ery proved just as de­mand­ing as the surgery it­self. Af­ter spend­ing two months in the hos­pi­tal, in April 2017, Khan be­gan what would be a one-year pe­ri­od un­der­go­ing 30 ses­sions of ra­di­a­tion tar­get­ing both his brain and spine be­fore be­gin­ning eight cy­cles of chemother­a­py. Every treat­ment de­mand­ed courage. Every day re­quired de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Fi­nal­ly, in April 2018, the words every fam­i­ly longs to hear ar­rived: Khan was can­cer-free. Five months lat­er, in Sep­tem­ber 2018, at the age of 12, he re­turned to pri­ma­ry school af­ter years away from the class­room. It was far from easy. He be­gan with short­ened school days be­fore slow­ly build­ing up to full at­ten­dance. Class­mates ea­ger­ly sup­port­ed him, car­ry­ing his lunch kit and school bag; teach­ers pa­tient­ly helped him read­just, and the school com­mu­ni­ty wel­comed him back with grace and warmth that his fam­i­ly still re­mem­bers with grat­i­tude.

“Aamir is a mir­a­cle. He is my hero.” Adi­takaur Khan, his moth­er and his right hand, has re­mained at his side through every emo­tion of the jour­ney.

Be­hind Khan’s suc­cess­ful re­cov­ery stands a fam­i­ly whose sac­ri­fices are im­pos­si­ble to mea­sure. His moth­er left her job to re­main at home be­cause of his con­stant risk of seizures. His fa­ther, Shamir Khan, be­came the fam­i­ly’s sole bread­win­ner while rais­ing four boys and man­ag­ing the ad­di­tion­al costs of spe­cialised foods and on­go­ing care. His moth­er says that his broth­ers and their ex­tend­ed fam­i­ly and friends have sup­port­ed Aamir with­out wa­ver­ing, from di­ag­no­sis through re­cov­ery. The surgery left Khan with a per­ma­nent im­bal­ance that caus­es him to drift to the left while walk­ing and a squint that af­fects his vi­sion, mean­ing that his fam­i­ly has to re­main close when­ev­er he is mov­ing around. Khan’s moth­er de­scribes his younger broth­er, Fazeer, 17, as one of his fiercest pro­tec­tors. “I can’t even bouff Aamir when Fazeer is around,” his moth­er laughs, “he is his body­guard.”

Khan con­tin­ued in­to sec­ondary school un­til stress trig­gered two back-to-back seizures dur­ing Form Three, and doc­tors ad­vised that tra­di­tion­al school­ing placed too much strain on his re­cov­er­ing brain. To­geth­er, the fam­i­ly made the de­ci­sion to be­gin home­school­ing, al­low­ing Khan to fo­cus on one ex­am­i­na­tion sub­ject at a time as his mem­o­ry con­tin­ues to im­prove.

That new path was made pos­si­ble through the sup­port of Za­hir Ali and the Glim­mer of Hope Foun­da­tion. Long be­fore Khan’s di­ag­no­sis trans­formed his life, the foun­da­tion had al­ready stepped in to as­sist dur­ing his first term of sec­ondary school by pro­vid­ing text­books and en­cour­age­ment. Lat­er, Ali helped the fam­i­ly en­rol Khan in A+ Tu­ition Ser­vices, where he could con­tin­ue his ed­u­ca­tion on­line at his own pace.

With mem­o­ry as a chal­lenge and un­able to over­load him­self, he has opt­ed to sit a sin­gle CSEC sub­ject an­nu­al­ly. He sat both Eng­lish and Prin­ci­ples of Busi­ness CSEC ex­ams, and next year he plans to tack­le Math­e­mat­ics. His goal is sim­ple but deeply mean­ing­ful. “Don’t stop fight­ing.” He in­tends to earn his full CXC cer­tifi­cate, one sub­ject, one vic­to­ry and one de­ter­mined step at a time.

Al­though the fam­i­ly con­tin­ues to be grate­ful for pre­vi­ous­ly re­ceived pub­lic as­sis­tance, that sup­port has since end­ed, leav­ing them to shoul­der the fi­nan­cial bur­den large­ly alone.

To­day, Aamir Khan dreams not on­ly of com­plet­ing his ed­u­ca­tion but of one day build­ing a ca­reer in busi­ness where he can help oth­ers. The great­est les­son that he has learned through a seem­ing­ly im­pos­si­ble jour­ney is not just about can­cer. It is about re­silience.

“Don’t stop fight­ing,” he says. “Push your­self to your lim­its. Nev­er give up. Even when every day feels chal­leng­ing and you don’t want to fight any­more, keep fight­ing. Pray to God for help.” Those words car­ry ex­tra­or­di­nary weight com­ing from a young man who was once giv­en a 50% chance of sur­vival and chose, against every ex­pec­ta­tion, to keep fight­ing.