A mother who has lost three children to terminal illness is candid about the devastating decision to tell her 10-year-old son he was recovering when in reality he went home to die.
Gheuwan Arja, 41, from Greenacre, a Sydney suburb, watched in terror as her son Omar smiled with delight as he rang the doorbell at the hospital to signal that he had completed his cancer treatment.
The mother of five revealed she told the ‘white lie’ to spare her son the pain of knowing he had just weeks to live after six months of grueling chemotherapy and 18 surgeries after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
The mother of five said she couldn’t bring herself to tell her 10-year-old he was going to die
The aggressive cancer attacks the lymph nodes, part of the body’s immune system.
Ms Arja said in a TikTok video that it was “one of the worst days of her life lying to him”.
“How do you tell your child he’s going home to spend his last days with his family?” she captioned the video.
Heartbreaking images show how the boy is in a wheelchair and rings the doorbell at the hospital.
Medical staff clap off-camera as Ms. Arja joins in as she stands behind her son.
She wipes a tear from her eye as her son smiles from his wheelchair.
Omar, 10, died in January 2022.
She never told her son that he was battling cancer, nor that he had also battled a brain tumor earlier in his young life.
Instead, she told him he was battling an ear infection.
The decision came after a bitter experience after watching two of her other children suffer and die from terminal illnesses.
Ms. Arja, a devout Muslim woman, revealed that her first-born daughter Aisha was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder called Neiman Pick Type C.
The condition causes cholesterol and other fats to build up in the liver, spleen, or lungs and eventually spread to the brain.
Aisha passed away in 2009 at the age of four.
Gheuwan Arja said it was ‘one of the worst days of her life’ when she lied to her son Omar about completing his treatment
“It was devastating and my whole world came crashing down,” Ms Arja wrote in a Start Good fundraiser.
“But I knew that Allah had a plan, and I had to accept it. Then, in 2019, my third son, Mohamed, was diagnosed with a brain tumor that we knew nothing about.
“He was showing symptoms of a stroke and we rushed him to hospital. But it was too late.
‘Mohamed died after barely two weeks. It was a heartbreaking experience and I felt like I had lost everything.’
Mohamed died almost ten years on the day after Aisha.
The family then suffered a third devastating blow when their fourth son, Omar, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in July 2021.
He died in January of the following year.
Ms Arja and her husband Fadi, 48, have two surviving children Rabieh, 16, and Luay, eight.
The mother, who has so far raised over $16,000 to take her eldest son to Makkah, wants other parents to know that “life goes on.”
‘Don’t give up on life. You go through things in life, but life is still beautiful,” she said 7News.
“You want your children to fight for life – how dare you give up on life. Don’t – that’s how I see it.
“If my son has fought for his life, how dare I give up mine.”