Student who beat serious blood disorder as a child is proving an inspiration to others
Diagnosed with serious blood disorder while still in primary school, engineering student is proving an inspiration to other sick children
As a sporty 10-year-old, Milly Pun Hok-hei felt she was too young to have anything seriously wrong with her. So when her parents took her to various doctors in 2006 over continual bouts of flu, she never thought it could be life-threatening.
"I was still at primary school. I was a runner, I liked sports. I was taking part in a swimming competition," she says, clutching a textbook on engineering at the University of Hong Kong.
But Pun was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma, a kind of tumour of the blood cells, and was transferred to the children's oncology ward at Prince of Wales Hospital in Sha Tin.
Pun, now a 19-year-old student, is soft spoken, but get her talking about her illness, enduring chemotherapy and spending months in hospital, and there is no room for sentimentality.
"I think another reason why I'm willing to face those challenges is that I'm still young and I want to explore and experience more," she says.
Then came the recovery. And then the relapse. At 13, Pun was back in hospital and learned that this time, she had just a 10 per cent chance of survival.
A bone marrow donation from her father, a tourist bus driver, followed, as did yet more treatment.