Make A Child Smile

Justine's Story
written by mom Jane

Justine was a healthy baby, and as she grew, she turned into the typical child that loved softball, playing outside with her friends, riding her bike and playing in the pool.

In 2006, when she was 10 years old, Justine fell, and it was only by accident that we would learn in the matter of two months, that the swelling and bump in Justine's leg was to be cancer. The x-ray did not find it, the MRI found the tumor a month and half after she fell, and the biopsy would confirm that she had Osteosarcoma (bone cancer) on her left leg/femur.

Our lives were forever changed that day. Justine would undergo 6 rounds of chemo before to try and shrink the tumor, and then doctors would do surgery to remove the tumor and section of bone that the cancer had affected. Justine had this surgery done in January of 2007, and this was to be the limb salvage procedure that would save her leg.

Justine was very sick during her chemo and had many hospital visits as she was so sick between them. Justine went into a rehab hospital after her initial surgery and was doing very well, but her leg was not healing the way it should have. The doctor had to go back in and open her up and clean the affected area out and put a vacuum in her leg to try and heal up the incision area. This time it started to heal. Justine would then start her chemo back up and we found out that one of the chemos used had caused her to lose a large amount of her hearing. Justine would not finish this chemo and the doctors decided she only had one more of this one, so they did not replace it with another.

Finally, after very long periods of waiting for her counts to come back up, Justine finished her chemo on her 11th Birthday. She was excited to be done and was happy to come home and celebrate her Birthday.... when suddenly, Justine had a grand mal seizure and broke her left hip and her left ankle. This being only one hour out of the hospital. Three hours later, we were back at Mass General Hospital where they would have to place three pins in her left hip and cast her broken ankle.

Justine was still able to go on her Make-A-Wish two weeks later to California to meet the cast of High School Musical, see the première of HSM2, get kissed by Zack Efron, and be able to think about starting back to school. However, upon our returning home from California, she ended up once again in the hospital for her counts being too low and not able to fight off infection. Justine would be in the hospital now for another 10 days. Against her wishes, Justine repeated the 5th grade and we hoped this was to be a better year for her. We then found out in November, that the bracket in her leg where her surgery was, had broken in half and more surgery would have to be done just before Christmas of 2007. Justine was very upset, but we did the surgery again and a bone graft from her hip was taken to try and help stimulate growth between her bone and the donor bone in her leg.

Justine seemed now to be on her way. School was going well and we were working hard in physical therapy to get her knee bending, when we saw how tall Justine was getting so we had to go back to see about the leg difference she had. Justine was told she would have to have a 4 inch lift put on her shoe and that the doctors would now have to go and staple the growth plates in her right leg to stop them from growing more. Justine was not happy about this and it meant more surgery for her. We had this surgery done in April of 2008. The growth plates did stop growing and things seemed to be back on track.

School got out for Justine and summer was to be a fun one or so we thought! Justine started having problems walking, and the physical therapist could see this as well, and in July, all of sudden, she was bow legged on the left side. We went back to the doctors as we were very concerned, and learned that yet again the bracket had broken in half and that no union of the bones was to be found in the x-rays. Justine was just crushed and yet again another surgery was to be done and going into a third year of school. Justine had the surgery done in August of 2008 and she did wonderful and we hoped she would be up and about soon, but her wound looked horrible. It was the sad news given to us, that two weeks after her surgery and an Emergency visit to MGH, would tell us that she now had MERSA, a staph infection she acquired while in the hospital. Justine now had to be in the hospital on antibiotics for two and a half weeks. Justine missed her first day of Middle School. She would have to continue on medication at home for another 6 weeks and then we were told that her leg looked good and we could stop the medication.

After three check-ups, in December, the news was given to us that the leg still had no union of bone growth and that the last two options for us at this point would be a total knee replacement with a rod extension, or to start all over again . The problem was that the leg had so much scar tissue that it was not functional for her, and her lift was now over 5 cm and made it hard for her to walk. Justine was afraid of getting MERSA again, so after many talks and many operations, Justine and the doctors thought that removing her leg would be the best for her.

Justine just wants to be a kid again, and the facts are that she has been on crutches for over two and a half years. Justine had to wear shoes to walk all the time so she wouldn't hurt her back because her legs were of different lengths. She was not able to ride her bike, play softball, go sledding or dance. Justine would simply say to everybody all the time, "What is the point of being cancer free if I can't do anything!!"

On January 9th, 2009, Justine had her left leg amputated. Surgery was a success!!! The doctor informed us right after her surgery, that she indeed did the right thing. It would appear that the surgery done in August, did not help. Justine's bracket had three screws loose already and indeed no growth was showing.

Justine is an amazing young lady that has taught many people many things, and I think this will be an ending to the beginning that Justine is looking for. Justine will be able again to be a child with her prosthetic leg. We pray our new journey ahead will be much better than our past journey though she still has lots of rehabilitation and physical therapy to do. Thank you for reading about Justine and taking the time to put a smile on her face.

(Story and Interests were last updated January, 2009)