LOUISVILLE, Ky. — At 14, Abigail Wimsatt knows she has a long road to recovery, and one few can relate to. The Cecilia teenager is recovering from a life-altering surgery after a bone cancer diagnosis last fall.
"Abby started high school, freshman year in August, and about mid-September she came to me saying she was having knee pain," Caitlyn Alexander, Abby's mom, said. "I thought maybe being in gym class, she'd injured herself. We tried a few home remedies. Nothing was getting better. The pain was getting worse, the knee was swelling."
It took two trips to the doctor before an x-ray revealed the cause of the pain back in October, a cancer in her tibia called Osteosarcoma.
"It's one of the more common bone cancers in teenagers and tends to be aggressive," Dr. Kerry McGowan, an oncologist with Norton Children's, said.
Osteosarcoma affects about 450 kids in the U.S. each year.
"It was heartbreaking," Alexander said. "I always teased that she was my healthy kid. Because I've been in and out of the hospital so much with my son."
WHAS11 met Alexander at the same hospital back in 2018, when Abby's baby brother Eli was born needing a heart transplant. Norton Children's became their home away from home until their prayers were answered when he was 4 months old. WHAS11 was there as Eli received the all clear from the hospital.
"We of course have fallen in love with the staff twice now and they do become family," Alexander said.
Alexander said it's ironic both her children were treated in the same rooms at times, just years apart. Today, Eli is thriving and Abby is as positive as they come.
"I'll get through this," she said. "Things will get better."
In Abby's case, removing the cancer meant removing the bone. She started chemo within days, preparing her for a surgery that would undoubtedly turn heads.
"I'm willing to talk about it because it's not something you see everyday," Abby said.
It's called rotationplasty. The surgeon removes the affected bone along with the knee joint. The lower portion of the leg along with the foot is rotated 180 degrees and attached to the upper thigh. The ankle then becomes your knee. McGowan's seen maybe three cases of it in her 10 years with Norton Children's.
"The patients that have done it, like the flexibility. She'll still need a prosthetic, but with a knee joint, although artificial, she'll be more flexible with it," McGowan said.
McGowan said the surgery's not for everyone, but Abby found plenty of support online from families on this same journey.
"That was the thing that encouraged us to make our decision was all these moms saying, 'my son is snowboarding', 'my daughter just ran her first 10k,'" Alexander said. "They were sharing all these stories of their successes and we knew this was going to give her the best life possible."
She underwent the surgery in January.
"There were days it got so hard we wondered if we made the right decision," Alexander said. "Seeing her now and how well she's recovered is just confirmation we did make the right decision."
Today, Abby's scans are clean, with a couple more months of chemo set to wrap around her 15th birthday. She admits, it's weird.
"Sometimes, I like to balance stuff on my foot," Abby said. "It took a while before I could move it the way I wanted it to move. I'd go up and it would go off to the side. I've definitely gotten used to it. It's becoming more normal."
She knows she's one of the lucky ones.
"There's been a lot of good. We've seen a lot of kids leave. But we've also had to say goodbye to some that we've gotten close to," Alexander said. "With my son, we lost a couple heart warriors and we've lost a few cancer warriors. It's a mix of emotions and I know I'm very blessed to have walked out of here with both of my kids."
Abby will get fitted for a prosthetic in a couple months when she's through with chemo. She hopes to return to Central Hardin High in the fall.
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