A man with desperate eyes carrying his son burst through the doors of Al-Shifa Medical Complex. This was in 2022 when bombings were less frequent and we could offer a standard of medical care that seems like a luxury today.

The man rushed toward the emergency department, where I worked as a nurse, before he collided with one of the beds, causing his legs to give way. The boy, Mahmoud, was 15 years old and suffering from debilitating bone pain we soon after diagnosed as a symptom of leukemia.

The next time I saw Mahmoud was a few months later, across the room, his face twisted in pain. Though he wasn’t my patient that day, I rushed over to help. His father explained that Mahmoud hadn’t yet started treatment for his cancer. I dried his tears and tried to distract him from his overwhelming pain until the doctor arrived.

He started to come to Al-Shifa several times a week for treatment. I made a point of checking in with him whenever I saw him. He shared a room with other children who were also battling serious illnesses. Once the chemotherapy started, his condition worsened before it improved. His hair fell out, his face grew pale, and he lost a lot of weight. But after weeks of treatment, his health began to show signs of recovery. His color came back, and he even started to grow back into his clothes.

I felt I had played some small role in his recovery, and it made me proud. He was a success story.

Then the war on Gaza began, and everything changed.

Medical supplies were already scarce in Gaza, but within the first two weeks of the war, they became almost nonexistent. As I continued to work at the displacement camp, which was hastily set up to treat those fleeing the bombardment, I wondered whether I could give my patients the care they needed.

Each day I worried — worried about my patients, about my family, about whether we would survive.

I thought particularly about my cousin Muhammad. He was 34 years old and had been suffering from colon cancer for years. During the war, his pain worsened due to lack of treatment. His home was destroyed in an airstrike, and he had no choice but to move to a tent in a displacement camp. The tent, like most, had neither clean water nor proper food. It was filthy, swarming with insects and rodents. It was no place for anyone, let alone someone as sick as Muhammad.

The constant bombardment — missiles, phosphorus bombs — has contributed to a rise in cancer cases, and the disease has spread like wildfire among children and adults alike. It was no coincidence that so many like Muhammad were suffering, their bodies breaking down under the pressure of war, stress, and inadequate medical care.

Just as I had seen Muhammad’s condition decline, so too did I see other patients access to proper cancer treatment deteriorate before my eyes without. Every day seemed like another step toward their inevitable deaths.

Muhammad had always been full of life, an ambitious young man with dreams of expanding his business selling children’s clothes. He loved children, even though he couldn’t have any of his own, and they adored him in return. They would run to him when he came home from work, and he would play with them, giving them sweets. But after his cancer diagnosis, he lost his playful nature. And the war… the war destroyed whatever passion he had left.

On May 5, we received the news of Muhammad’s death. He had succumbed to his illness. When I heard the news, I couldn’t help but wonder: Would the children who loved him so much notice that he was gone? Would they remember the games they had played together, the dreams they had share that were now lost to the horrors of war?

As a nurse, I face the constant, brutal reality that I cannot always ease my patients’ pain. Medications are supposed to be readily available, but here, in Gaza, they are often nonexistent. Since the war began on October 7, I have seen cancer patients suffer indignities beyond those impose by illness. They waste away, losing weight, energy, and even their ability to move in unhygienic conditions without much in the way of support. The pain slowly eats them alive, while the world looks away.

Then there’s Anoud, a 29-year-old mother of two. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer a year ago but has been unable to receive the necessary treatment because of the closure of crossings. Her condition has worsened to the point where she looks like a woman of 60. Her face is pale, and her body is frail. Every day, she struggles with death, needing the medications that are no longer available. If she doesn’t receive them soon, her children will lose their mother.

Hundreds of people in Gaza suffer from cancer, made worse by the anemia, weight loss, and lack of life-saving drugs. With every bomb that drops, their hope diminishes. They wish for nothing more than the end of this war, so they can access the medication they need and return, if only briefly, to their lives.

The war has not only destroyed homes and lives; it has also brought diseases and epidemics. Garbage litters the streets, fires are used in place of gas, and illnesses like asthma, skin diseases, and even more cancers have spread.

I think about all this every day as I try to care for my patients in makeshift medical points. I wonder, could I have done more for Muhammad? Could I have saved him if he had received the right treatment? I think of Mahmoud, and of Anoud, and all the others whose futures are being stolen by war, disease, and the cruel lack of care.

This is the reality we face in Gaza. Patients are not just fighting their diseases; they are fighting a war for survival. Every day, I see people I care about slip away, their dreams and their lives lost in a world that seems to have forgotten them.