Joy van Schoor
In January 2016, 14-year-old Joy Schoor returned from a family holiday to the Kruger National Park with what appeared to be a standard fever. Within days, her life changed overnight.
Numerous tests revealed she was battling acute myeloid leukaemia, an aggressive form of blood cancer. Forced to leave school for a year to undergo intense chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant—with her younger brother, Joel, stepping up to be her stem cell donor.—the teenager suddenly had to confront the terrifying possibility of dying before her life had truly begun.Yet, despite the immense weight of the diagnosis, she steadfastly refused to view the disease as a death sentence.
A decade later, she is preparing to walk back onto the hospital wards, but this time wearing a stethoscope. Now a final-year medical student at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, she is on the cusp of qualifying into the very profession that once saved her life. This remarkable transition from patient to practitioner was not born out of a newfound interest, but rather the deep reinforcement of a childhood dream.
Having experienced firsthand what it means to depend entirely on the compassion of healthcare professionals, she felt a profound calling to turn her personal suffering into a lifelong purpose and pay forward the extraordinary care she received.
