Joy van Schoor
What began as a routine post-holiday fever in January 2016 would change the course of 14-year-old Joy Schoor’s life forever.
After returning from a family trip to the Kruger National Park, she soon fell seriously ill, and extensive testing revealed an acute myeloid leukaemia diagnosis — an aggressive form of blood cancer that forced her to step away from school for a year as she underwent intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. Her younger brother, Joel, served as her stem cell donor during treatment.
In the face of a life-threatening illness, Schoor was forced to confront the possibility that her life could be cut short before it had truly begun. Yet she refused to accept the diagnosis as a death sentence, Weekend Argus reported.
Nearly a decade later, she is preparing to enter hospital wards again — this time as a doctor. Schoor is now a final-year medical student at Stellenbosch University’s Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, on the verge of qualifying into the profession that once saved her life.
