While he has been given two weeks to live, 7-year-old Junaid Arendse seemed oblivious to the prognosis of his doctors when Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille paid him a visit at his home.
Seated on a couch in Margaret Arendse’s lounge in Portlands, Mitchells Plain, the Grade 1 pupil nonchalantly answered De Lille’s questions.
“I don’t have a girlfriend. My mother was my Valentine,” he said and burst into laughter when tickled by De Lille.
Seemingly endowed with a healthy appetite, Junaid and the mayor munched on hamburgers she had brought him, along with a colouring book, crayons and sweets.
He admitted that curry and fried chicken were his favourite foods.
It was reported that doctors had diagnosed Junaid with Stage 4 neuroblastoma – a solid cancerous tumour that begins in the nerve cells of infants and young children – in May 2014. He was given just three months to live in June 2015.
His only hope then had been Topotecan – an expensive treatment not available in South Africa’s state hospitals.
Donations from generous Cape Times readers, friends, supporters and his school, raised more than R150 000 for his treatment.
Bravely defying the odds, he survived the three-month limit doctors had given him as treatment and test results in September 2015 showed the cancer had been eradicated from his upper body.
But about three weeks ago, the cancer returned.
Doctors said there was nothing they could do for the youngster except to prescribe painkillers.
De Lille said: “We were so happy when he was cleared (of cancer) in 2015. He had bounced back. I’m a cancer survivor. I had cancer of the throat in 1998, but was cleared in 2003.”