When I was 5 years old I was a typical boy obsessed with sports. I was playing in my second year of hockey when I started feeling pains in my right thigh. My parents first thought I had a charlie-horse, but when the pain persisted I went to the doctor's office. The doctor told us it was just growing pains and they would subside. Strangely, though, the growing pains were only in one leg, and when they didn't go away for weeks the doctor suspected something worse. That's when I was referred to the hospital for an x-ray and MRI scan. There, the doctors noticed an adult fist-sized tumour in my right femur. Finally, after months of pains that were bad enough to make me quit hockey and wake me up at night, I finally received the diagnosis of Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, in my right femur.

My doctors gave me two options to dispose of the disease - the quick and easy route of leg amputation; or the long, bumpy road of toxic chemotherapy, major painstaking surgeries, and the risk of setbacks that would accompany the salvation of my leg. Which option would you choose?


There was only one option that seemed practical in my mind. I was going to fight the cancer, to save my leg and play sports again.



The doctors' warnings held true - I spent 13 months in and out of the hospital for chemotherapy, endured countless medical and physical setbacks that made life seem unfair and came awfully close to losing my life several times. I had 11 reconstructive surgeries including a twelve hour procedure to remove my malignant femur and replace it with my much shorter and weaker fibula, which is what I still live with today. I lost all of my hair for a year, I looked and felt awful, but I never gave up and never thought that I made a mistake in choosing to fight it.


Here I am today, 13 years after my last dose of chemotherapy. I'm a pitcher for McMaster University Marauders baseball team, doing so with a leg brace and a shoe lift to compensate for my leg length difference.



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