Father tells of son's cancer mistaken for ear infection

An 11-year-old boy was diagnosed with a rare type of childhood cancer after experiencing symptoms of an ear infection.

- ATHENA STAVROU

Ilan Choudhury, now 14, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in the summer of 2022 after going back and forth to his GP.

His father, Niaz, 51, said his son had undergone several courses of antibiotics, but symptoms of an infection, including some bleeding from his ears, kept returning.

“It was the summer of 2022, when Ilan was 11, that he started getting tummy pain, and pains everywhere,” Niaz said. “He had bleeding from the ears; it shifted between the left and right ear. We were back and forth to A&E for around six to eight weeks. At that point, they said he had an ear infection.

“He was getting a temperature on and off and he had lost quite a bit of weight; he was unable to eat. He had always been a very good eater, but then he reduced down to just nibbling food.”