Fighting with everything he had to live
Bach’s memory goes back to late 2021, when he was in year 11 in Hai Phong. Coming home one afternoon, he happened to notice an unusual swollen lymph node on his neck. With Covid-19 surging, his family took him to a local clinic and were told it was ordinary lymphadenitis. He took the antibiotics he was prescribed, but the lump did not shrink — it grew. In early 2022 the family took him to K3 Tân Triều Hospital. The test results struck the small family like lightning: Bach had lymphoma, a dangerous blood cancer.
Six months of chemotherapy at K Hospital were painful and exhausting. By the middle of 2022 doctors told him he had reached remission. With that weight lifted, Bach put everything into finishing year 12, and was overwhelmed with joy when he won a place at Hanoi University of Science and Technology.
The joy did not last. Just as he was about to complete his enrolment, the disease returned. Bach applied to defer his place, and the dream of being a Bách khoa student was put on hold.
The years that followed tied him to hospital wards. Waiting for a suitable source of medicine for a stem cell transplant, he deferred his studies twice. In the first semester of 2024–25 he tried to return to class, but the side effects of maintenance chemotherapy left his immune system exhausted. Every month he was brought down by infection and spent two weeks in hospital. Only at the end of 2025, when the medical conditions were finally right, did he undergo the stem cell transplant at the National Institute of Haematology and Blood Transfusion.
Through long days in isolation in a sterile room, between four cold white walls, Bach fought with everything he had to live. The transplant succeeded, to the overwhelming relief of his family and the medical team.
Arms that held him at the edge
Through the illness of this maths and informatics student, the university’s care reached him and his family like cool water, arriving exactly when it was needed. In the moments before the critical transplant, Bach faced a severe shortage of granulocytes. His father went to the lecturers at Bách khoa and explained the situation. Hearing how desperate it was, the teachers immediately put out a call to the whole student body for blood group O granulocyte donors.
The response was immediate. Within 30 minutes of the call going out, dozens of students were at the hospital registering for screening tests. Bach says his messenger exploded with messages of concern and encouragement from teachers and fellow students. He recalls, moved: “So many people encouraged me. People still message me now to ask how I am. I remember Nghĩa and Tâm — they were among the first to turn up at the hospital. After the screening, they kept quietly messaging to ask about my health, giving me something to lean on.”
Alongside the precious granulocytes, practical support kept arriving for the family. The Bách khoa Alumni Golf Club sent a scholarship of 10 million VND. Alumni, lecturers and classmates together raised nearly 68 million VND and handed it directly to the family. As Bach entered the 2025–26 academic year, the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics added his name to the list of FaMI scholarship recipients. Each award and each message of support became solid ground beneath him through the hardest months.
This September, Bach is wearing the Bách khoa student colours again. To be near him, his mother and sister moved to Hanoi and rented a room. Every day his mother carefully prepares strictly sterile meals to protect a son only recently out of hospital. Sitting in a Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics lecture hall two weeks into term, still finding his feet with the pace of study, Bach smiles steadily. His parents remind him always to remember what he owes his teachers, the alumni and his friends — the people who together gave him life a second time.
Having left the edge between life and death, Bach meets life with gratitude. He says he has never thought of himself as an inspiration; his is simply one small story of his own. If it touches a heart that is hurting, or adds a little hope for someone facing hardship, that is happiness enough.
With four university years ahead of him, Bach’s wish is a simple one: to live every moment of being an ordinary student. As he wrote to someone from Bách khoa one September morning:
“Remission, and being able to study again, is already a success for me. I am happy, proud and grateful to everyone. Over the next four years I only hope to go through every part of being an ordinary student, because to me being ordinary is now something precious.”
Nguyễn Xuân Bách’s steps back into the lecture hall show that care and sharing are the quiet, powerful inheritance of generations under this roof. As Hanoi University of Science and Technology approaches its 70th anniversary, his story is a warm reminder of what it means to step forward for one another. Scholarships given in kindness, and real support returning from generation after generation of alumni, build firmer ground from which students of great resolve can overcome hardship and go confidently after knowledge.
Written by: Gia Hân
