For Cordelah Duran, Christmas Means Hope, Not Presents

For most kids, the countdown to Christmas is all about excitement, dreaming of toys, games, and holiday magic. But for fourteen-year-old Cordelah Duran, the countdown looks very different. Instead of marking off days until presents, she’s counting hospital visits, enduring pain, and summoning the strength just to keep going. Cordelah is battling pediatric cancer, and while many children are writing long wish lists, her letter to her mom asked for something far more precious, something most families never have to think twice about: a normal Christmas. Shane Williams brings us her story.

 

Shane Williams, Reporting

In a simple handwritten letter, Cordelah Duran opens up about a body that feels worn down by illness, the exhausting trips to Merida for treatment, and the quiet fear that comes with constant pain and bleeding. But what’s most striking isn’t despair, it’s love. Through every word, Cordelah chooses hope over anger, reminding us of the strength and grace that can shine even in the darkest moments.

 

I only can wish to see Christmas this year for mom, my body is tired. Mom I have my Christmas wish. Don’t know which you can give for you are broke but just in case, I wish to have Christmas tree (lots of lights), food on Christmas day, skin care, ring light, Led light strip, I-pod, set of body scrub.

 

Small gestures meant to bring back a sense of everyday life to a reality that’s been anything but.

 

 

Cordelah Duran, Cancer Fighter

“I just mi di try express how I mi feel because ih rough that how I sick and I lone the travel so it rough.”

 

 

 

 

 

Shane Williams, Reporter

So what do you want for your mom this Christmas?

 

Cordelah Duran

“I just want my ma feel happy for Christmas.”

 

We first met Cordelah four years ago, when her mom was hosting a barbecue fundraiser to cover the cost of a doctor’s visit in Merida. She has been fighting cancer and related complications for over seven years. Although she’s in remission, her heart and intestines continue to trouble her, complications which require continued visits to O’Horan Hospital in Mérida.

 

 

 

 

Cordelah Duran

“For past three days I noh have no pain, but rather than that, most of the time I’m in pain, but I try to put on a smile on my face so people don’t know when I’m in pain or when I’m not in pain ’cause I put on a smile on my face. If people ask me if I’m fine I’m fine, I’m doing good, but inside I’m not. It’s the inside that matters, because right now my intestine is swollen. But I don’t make people know that, but now I’m expressing the feeling that I am in.”

 

 

 

For a mother who sacrificed her teaching career to care for Cordelah, the letter was a mix of heartbreak and profound humility. She says the financial strain of medical travel, treatments, and daily care has pushed the family to the edge, but giving up has never been an option and she put the letter out there, not for sympathy, but as an expression of love.

 

Delilah Arana, Mother

“Every year? I wish that she sees Christmas and when that letter, I read that letter, I didn’t want to post it up but when I read it again and I spoke to her, I said, I asked her, is it okay to post it up? Because yes, she wants to see Christmas and yes she wants gift, but the message behind it was to like have parents appreciate their children. Not only parents, but appreciate the family on a whole. You don’t know what will happen.”

 

 

 

 

Delilah Arana says doctors had given up on her daughter, until Dr. Pablo Gonzalez Montalvo, head of O’Horan Hospital in Merida, stepped in. He made sure Cordelah got top-notch care, part of a service his hospital has offered Belizean kids with cancer since 2008. Earlier this month, Dr. Montalvo was in Belize celebrating Christmas with survivors like Cordelah. Thanks to partnerships with local groups like the Belize Cancer Center, the five-year survival rate for pediatric cancer patients has jumped from 38% to 67%.

 

 

 

Dr. Pablo Gonzalez Montalvo, Oncologist, O’Horan Hospital

“I get emotional on this part of my job. It’s difficult sometimes to hold the tears back. The problem of childhood cancer is often seen by the general population of as a very sad thing because you get to see children die. But we also get to change that fate. What, when we see childhood cancer, if we do nothing, everybody will die. If you do something, some of them, or in this case most of them will conquer cancer and will live a full healthy life. We will give the family forty, fifty, sixty, seventy years of life, which is the huge impact of childhood cancer.”

 

 

 

 

Cordelah is nothing short of a living miracle. Just over a decade ago, the survival rate for a Belizean child with cancer was roughly the thirty percent. Despite the pain, she continues to fight, smiling on the outside while her body battles on the inside. Cordelah’s Christmas wish isn’t about what’s under the tree, it’s about something far more precious: time, comfort, and a child’s deep love for her mother. It’s hope that her mom, who has sacrificed so much through every hospital visit and sleepless night, will finally receive the blessings she truly deserves.

 

 

 

Cordelah Duran

“I just want unu just please help because cancer da nothing nice. Sometimes you are in your down days. Sometimes yo dream you noh di make it. Sometimes you feel like the cancer the come back. You just please help because it rough. I try to, don’t put it in my head that I’m sick. I try to ignore it because if I think about it, I get down. So I just try to be a normal child as everyone else.”

 

Shane Williams

What do you expect to be doing this Christmas?

 

Cordelah Duran

“Just have Christmas, a good Christmas with my family. Have some nice meals and wonderful present this Christmas.”

 

Her story reminds us that as the holidays come, Christmas isn’t always about boxes and bows, it’s about hope and strength, one day at a time. Shane Williams for News Five.