I was 13 when my knee started to ache. I was playing football twice a week and in the school cross country, netball and swimming teams, so I just assumed I had a sporting injury or maybe growing pains.
A couple of months passed and suddenly Christmas had come and gone and it wasn’t getting any better, in fact it was getting worse.
A football match in early February saw me in so much pain that my coach switched me with the goalie so I didn’t have to run around. Two days later. I phoned my mum from school as I was in agony.
She took me straight to the Samuel Johnson Hospital in Lichfield. I remember having an x-ray and laughing and joking with her about needing a leg brace or maybe even a cast. But the thought of potentially having a cracked bone and being out for six weeks was unthinkable. We were using humour to diffuse what was starting to become a scary situation.
But then I remember being called back into the consultation room and there was a new nurse there, a different one - an older, clearly more senior, woman. She looked at me and said: “The X-ray is not normal.” I remember hearing the words “lesion” and “tibia” and "MRI tomorrow, at Queens.” They gave me some crutches and told me not to put any weight on my leg.
Suddenly, we weren’t laughing anymore.
I'm not sure I fully understood the gravity of the situation, but my mum did, and even when the words “osteosarcoma” and “chemotherapy” were mentioned the following day at the Queen’s Hospital in Burton, she managed to hold it together. It was only when the consultant held up my chest X-ray I’d had that morning that she burst into tears. The chest X-ray was clear.
Now at this point I still didn’t have much of a clue about what was going on, but the previous evening, my mum had Googled “lesion, tibia,” and the signs and symptoms of osteosarcoma came up, so she knew immediately that’s what it was. She also learnt it spread very quickly to the lungs and, if a child had metastases to the lungs on diagnosis, then the outcome was even worse, hence the tears when my chest X-ray was clear.
Yes, this was something horrific, but I still had a chance.
Very quickly I was admitted to Birmingham Children’s Hospital for a biopsy, a nuclear bone scan, more MRis, X-rays and numerous other tests. Five days later, I was let out with my world completely turned on its head. I had cancer. At 13. A very rare bone cancer called osteoblastic osteosarcoma which only affects 30 children a year in the UK. Me. I was one of the 30.
I had four weeks to come to terms with it before my in-patient chemotherapy began and, if I’m honest, I’m not sure I did ever come to terms with it. I was just living in a perpetual nightmare. I’d wake up and think it had all been a dream before remembering the horror was, in fact, real and I’d have to come to terms with it all over again, day after day after day. I was numb. It just didn't feel real.
I remember one afternoon with my mum. I just remember we talked for over an hour about the reality of the situation - about what it actually meant. I was in for the fight of my life. I couldn’t run away, I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t make it disappear. I just had to face it and fight. So that’s what I did.
Over the course of 16 months I had eight infusions of Cisplatin, six of Doxorubicin, 14 of Methotrexate, 48 of Mifamurtide, eight general anaesthetics. And even after all that treatment, my leg had to be amputated. I also had two lung surgeries, because the cancer did end up metastasising to my lungs, two subsequent collapsed lungs, a bout of sepsis, two central lines, eight blood trans-fusions, three platelet transfusions, seven MRIs, 13 x-rays, eight CT scans, three heart scans and a nuclear bone scan.
I almost didn’t survive on numerous occasions and the memories of my time in hospital are just too painful to recount. Mouth sores, no hair, projectile vomiting, being wheeled off to have my leg cut off, being wheeled back without my leg. It was hell on Earth.
But somehow I did it. I survived.
I knew I couldn’t change what had happened to me, but I knew I was in control of how I responded, so I decided to be the very best version of this new me that I could.
I convinced the team at the West Midlands Rehabilitation Clinic to let me be the first child to start their prosthetics rehab whilst still on chemotherapy, giving me a massive head start with the walking.
I convinced my wonderful football team and surrounding leagues to fundraise so I could get the world’s best prosthetic leg, the Genium X3.
I launched annabelkiki.com - a website detailing the three areas of my life I’d now focus on:
Amputee Athlete, Diversity Model and Travel Blogger… and I just did it. I made my new life happen. I was quickly signed to Zebedee Talent an inclusive model agency, I started playing amputee football for England, I re-leart to ski and started to blog about inclusive travel… and I’ve never looked back.
The worst thing in the world happened to me, but I won’t let it win. Life is still worth living.
Donate now (This link opens in a new window) More about Osteosarcoma