Cordelah’s Simple Christmas Wish Touches Hearts

While many children countdown to Christmas with toys and games, fourteen-year-old Cordelah Duran is counting hospital visits, pain, and the courage it takes to keep fighting. A pediatric cancer patient, Cordeliah’s wish is simple: to see her mother happy and enjoy a normal Christmas together.

In a heartfelt handwritten letter, she wrote, “I only can wish to see Christmas this year for mom, my body is tired. Mom I have my Christmas wish… 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.” Despite her illness, her words carry love, not anger, reflecting a remarkable strength and spirit.

“I just want my ma feel happy for Christmas,” Cordelah told News 5, expressing a wish that goes beyond gifts to the simple joy of family togetherness. She has been fighting cancer for over seven years, enduring treatments in Mérida and ongoing complications, yet she continues to smile through the pain. “Most of the time I’m in pain, but I try to put on a smile on my face so people don’t know,” she shared.

Her mother, Delilah Arana, who gave up her teaching career to care for her daughter, said the letter reminded her to cherish family. “The message behind it was to like have parents appreciate their children… You don’t know what will happen,” she said.

Cordelah’s survival is credited to Dr. Pablo Gonzalez Montalvo of Hospital O’Horán, who has been providing specialised care to Belizean pediatric cancer patients since 2008. “We’ll conquer cancer and will live a full healthy life. We will give the family 40, 50, 60, 70 years of life, which is the huge impact of childhood cancer,” he said.

Cordelah’s wish is to “Just have Christmas, a good Christmas with my family.”