July is Sarcoma Awareness Month 🎗️🦴🫁🌻
In February 2025, I was just a normal teenager.
I had finally started taking hockey (my one true love) more seriously while doing MMA on the side. I was also fighting an eating disorder and severe depression, but for the first time in a long time, it felt like I was slowly finding my footing again.
What I didn't know was that cancer had already become part of my story.
Back in October 2024, I had started noticing pain in my left leg. It wasn't unbearable at first, just annoying enough to mention to my doctor. I was told it was probably a sports injury, nothing to worry about, that I should rest and give it time.
Looking back, I sometimes wonder how many teenagers with cancer hear the same thing. You're young. You're active. It must be a pulled muscle. Growing pains. A sports injury.
Eventually, it became so severe that I couldn't sleep through the night. I'd wake up crying because it hurt so much. My leg became swollen, there was a noticeable lump, and it was warm to the touch.
That's when my parents decided we needed another opinion.
That decision from their part probably saved my life.
Imaging quickly revealed a massive tumour in my left femur.
Thankfully, it was still localized.
Within days, my entire future changed. School, hockey, sports, plans with friends, everything was replaced with oncology appointments, scans, chemotherapy schedules, and conversations no teenager should ever have to have.
For my first battle with osteosarcoma, I received the same chemotherapy protocol that has been the standard treatment for over forty years. Despite decades of research in medicine, children and teenagers with osteosarcoma are still largely treated with drugs that haven't changed significantly since the 1980s.
I also underwent an extensive limb salvage surgery. My surgeons removed the cancerous section of my femur and reconstructed my leg with a metal prosthesis. They fought incredibly hard to save my leg, and although the surgery ultimately didn’t work I will always be grateful to my orthopedic surgeon for giving me that chance.
After nine long months of chemotherapy, endless blood tests, scans, admissions, transfusions, nausea, and exhaustion, I heard the words every patient dreams of.
Less than three months later and only days before my first cancerversary, I woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe.
Scans showed fluid around my lung.
Further testing revealed multiple pulmonary nodules.
My osteosarcoma had relapsed and worse of all, metastasized to my lungs, making my cancer stage 4.
Cancer had found me again.
Before restarting chemotherapy, I underwent a thoracotomy—one of the most painful surgeries I've ever experienced. Surgeons opened my chest, spread my ribs apart, collapsed my lung, and manually searched for every tumour they could feel before removing them.
Then came another six cycles of second-line chemotherapy.
More hospital admissions.
Today, I've finished those six cycles.
As I write this, I'm once again considered NED.
I have end-of-treatment scans coming up, and like every survivor, I know the anxiety that comes with waiting for those results. Scanxiety never really leaves you.
No matter what those scans show, cancer has permanently changed my life.
It changed the way I see time, friendships, family, and the future.
Sarcoma is rare, but rare doesn't mean insignificant.
Thousands of children, teenagers, and young adults are diagnosed with sarcomas every year. Too many relapse. Too many run out of treatment options because research funding hasn't kept pace with the need.
Awareness shouldn't stop at wearing a ribbon for a month.
It should mean funding better treatments.
It should mean investing in research.
It should mean making sure the next teenager who walks into an X-ray room has better options than I did.
July is Sarcoma Awareness Month.
No teenager should have to trade hockey sticks, school bags, or dreams for chemotherapy, surgeries, and hospital beds.
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