An 18-year-old boy from Nyeri county has many reasons to celebrate as the year 2025 begins after beating cancer and scoring an impressive A minus in the recently released Kenya Certificate of Secondary School Education (KCSE) 2024. Nyeri student Danson Baragu diagnosed with cancer scores A- in KCSE. Danson Baragu was diagnosed with Hodkin’s Lymphoma in 2022 when he was in Form Two. He spent most of the years in the hospital instead of at Baricho Boys High School, where he finished his national exams and recorded an A- of 77 points.
The Nyeri County Referral Hospital oncology department celebrated the young man’s stellar performance despite being ill throughout his studies. How Nyeri student balanced studies and cancer treatment Baragu explained that he did not understand his diagnosis at first as he never imagined he would suffer from cancer. “I did not understand the doctor’s language at that time because when I saw the results, they said I had classical Hodkin’s lymphoma. It was unknown, and I did not imagine it was a type of cancer. At that time, I knew cancer was so deadly,” he said in a report by Citizen TV.
The right boy shared that the treatment was excruciatingly painful, and he had to undergo several surgeries to make his get better. “That was the most painful experience, and they had to drill into my bone to get the bone marrow inside. The medicine was also painful going through the vein, and I had to go through another surgery to have a chemo port installed in my chest,” he added. Despite the challenges, the 18-year-old did not lose hope in his studies, noting that he had to work twice as hard as the rest to catch up on his studies and pass his exams. “I had to wake up so early by 3 am and sleep at midnight. The students would help me understand what I missed, and it came out of sacrifice and hard work,” he noted. He also expressed plans to pursue a career in oncology to help other cancer patients beat the deadly disease.
by Lynn-Linzer Kibebe
