When I was 11 years old, I was diagnosed with cancer in my leg. After months of difficult treatment, I got to talk to my surgeon about my surgery options. That morning, we dropped my brother off at school, and my mom, dad, and I drove to the hospital. My heart was racing thinking about all the possibilities. I thought they would be pretty straightforward and nothing too invasive, so I wasn’t too concerned, but I was still thinking about all the what-ifs. When we got downstairs, we sat in the colorful waiting room for about 10 minutes before a nurse came out and said “Isabelle?” and took us to a clinic room. The nurse took my blood pressure as I sat on the sterile, crinkly paper on top of the blue leather bench. My mom and my dad gave me a worried look, so I just looked straight ahead. We sat in silence until my surgeon walked in after what felt like forever. My surgeon sat next to me and started talking about my options.

I had three options: I could get my leg amputated, which would involve not having the other half of my leg, so that did not appeal to me very much. I could get a rotationplasty surgery, which is very similar, but they amputate your leg and then take your foot, rotate it 90 degrees and put it in the space where your knee would be so you can attach a prosthesis to it. My last option was to get my bone replaced with a metal implant. For me, that was the most obvious option. It would look just like normal and I would get to have a leg.

But then my surgeon told me that the implant surgery would actually be the most limiting. With the other two, I could still do almost all sports using a prosthesis, but with the implant, I wouldn’t be able to run or do any high impact sports, like the figure skating, skiing, and volleyball that I loved.

I kept myself together at the appointment, but when we got back to the rental house that night I burst into tears. I did not want to have to decide something like this. I just wanted to have a “normal” life. I was 11 years old. All I wanted to do was have fun with my friends and not have to worry about my leg. I didn’t want to be so different from everyone else.

I told my mom how I was feeling and how none of this was fair. I told her that I didn’t want to have to look down at my leg and not see the other half, but I also didn’t want to be super limited in what I could do. I didn’t want to have people looking at the other half of my non-existent leg all the time and get weird looks from people everywhere I went for the rest of my life.

My mom told me that it was so powerful that when I was only 11 years old, I was being given a choice that would make a huge impact on my life. She told me that no matter what I chose, it would be my decision and that it had so much power. When she said it like this, I started to look at everything about this surgery a little differently. I started to feel powerful instead of helpless. I could see why this decision was mine to make. At that moment I didn’t care what anyone else thought about my leg because I knew that the decision I made would be right for me and no one else could take that from me.

© Isabelle. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.