When I walked into the living room, my 6 month old daughter Rheya didn’t recognise me. She looked almost scared of me. In fact, she refused to be near me and cried into her mum’s arms.

It was the day I got home from my first round of cancer treatment , and it was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to face. In 2022, I was diagnosed with a type of cancer called Burkitt’s Lymphoma , at the age of 21. I spent two months separated from my family.

So, when I got back, I was excited to see her. But, I felt crushed at her reaction. It wasn’t her fault – but I felt like it was mine.

I felt like I had failed as a father and let her down by not being with her during those months. She reacted that way because she didn’t recognise me – I was bald , extremely pale and had lost about 30kg in weight. After that moment, between the exhaustion and guilt, I spent the rest of that night in bed.

The next day, after a lot of encouragement from Rheya’s mother, she let me hold her for the first time and it felt amazing to be able to be a small part of her life again. But, it showed me that I had a long way to go before she would see me as her dad again. Over the next few days she got more comfortable with me – she would do little things like hold my hand or eventually let me give her a bottle.

It was a long process for her – we were pretty much restarting our entire relationship. Before I was diagnosed, I had severe stomach pains for about a month. It eventually got so ba.