10/09/2026
10 September 2026 (Thursday) Lilly –
(Age: 13 years old)
Lilly’s story is told by her mom, Leigh, with Lilly sitting right beside us, eating a toasted sandwich and making sure we get her story right. Her little sister, Saxen, is there too, very much part of the moment and part of Lilly’s story.
Lilly loves Birkenstocks, bedazzling, gymnastics, her friends and playing soccer. She supports Barcelona. Before cancer, life was wonderfully normal. School, shopping, friends, home and sport. Lilly had earned her Gauteng colours for gymnastics and had always been incredibly committed.
Then something changed.
She started saying gymnastics was hard. She wasn't interested anymore and, as her mom, I kept encouraging her to work harder. This was something she loved. I couldn't understand why she suddenly wanted to give up.
She was pale, so I took her for blood tests. They showed she was anaemic and we started iron tablets. She was tired and becoming a fussy eater, but… she was thirteen and a typical teenager.
We went on holiday to Mozambique and I noticed Lilly had lost weight. On the day we were leaving, she complained that her chest was sore. I thought perhaps the anti-malaria tablets had caused heartburn, so we tried Gaviscon and Rennies. She said they “kind of” helped.
When we came home, life carried on. Lilly even went on camp. I remember telling a friend that she wasn't eating properly. My friend suggested perhaps she was anorexic. When I heard that word, suddenly, something in me shifted. I knew my child. Yes, Lilly was fussy and a perfectionist about her appearance, but I knew this wasn't an eating disorder.
Something was wrong. Suddenly, I knew. My motherly instincts started screaming… On Monday morning, I found her vomiting in the toilet. Amazingly, Lilly still insisted on going to school. Later, the school phoned. She was extremely pale and I went to fetch her. We went straight back to the doctor.
More blood tests were done. The results showed her haemoglobin had dropped. Lilly was admitted to hospital. There were lots more tests, scans and a sonar. And then they found it. A huge mass in her chest, sitting between her heart and lungs like a balloon.
We stop and look directly at Lilly, and ask "Didn't you struggle to breathe?"
Nope! She had just felt exhausted.
This enormous mass was inside my child, and she had simply been carrying on. Then came three and a half weeks of waiting. The hardest period of my life. Two biopsies. After the first, they thought it could be Hodgkin lymphoma. The second showed something far more unusual, features of both Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, known as Grey Zone Lymphoma.
We received the final diagnosis in early February 2026.
Cancer changes the entire family. My memory is not what it used to be. There is so much trauma, PTSD. And I don't sweat the small stuff anymore. Things that once felt important simply aren't. You realise very quickly what actually matters. Your children. Their health.
For Lilly, one of the hardest things was being told she would lose her beautiful long hair. She was also terrified of needles. Her nurses were incredibly patient, even allowing her to practise injecting into squishies so she could understand what was happening and feel more in control.
Lilly loved her nurses; they all called her Flower or Blom and her doctor. "She's kind," Lilly says, "and super straightforward."
Before treatment, part of Lilly's ovarian tissue was preserved, giving her the possibility of having children one day.
Cancer affected Saxen too. While I needed to be with Lilly, Saxen was often with her dad. She missed having her mom around and sometimes felt left out, even though she understood. Cancer doesn't happen to one person. Somehow, the whole family gets “diagnosed.”
Today, Lilly is back at school. She has decided not to return to gymnastics for now, and that is okay. She has also been appointed as a monitor.
And Lilly has an idea.
She thinks children arriving in an oncology ward should receive a little welcome book, explaining what to expect so they don't feel quite so frightened and alone. Maybe this will be a project that Lilly does when she is ready. Because Lilly knows what it feels like to arrive scared. And now she wants to make it a little less scary for others.
Note from Rainbows and Smiles: One of the things that stood out to us about this family was their openness and honesty with Lilly. There were no secrets or whispered conversations. Lilly was included, listened to and given the space to understand what was happening to her body and her life. It was beautiful to witness how that honesty seemed to take the elephant out of the room.
