World Cancer Day: Aditya’s brave battle with osteosarcoma

To mark World Cancer Day on February 4, myUpchar brings to you stories about cancer survivors, their families, as well as cancer surgeons and doctors. This is the final part of the series. The first thing that strikes you about Aditya is his fearlessness and positivity. Before the interview, he jokingly requested not to be asked too many hard questions. To see him so calm and composed, it is difficult to believe the suffering he has undergone. Aditya was just 15 when a persistent pain in his left leg began bogging him down. Eventually, the pain became so acute that his family took him to the hospital. Aditya was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare type of cancer afflicting the bones. It usually affects the largest bones in the body; it was Aditya’s left thigh bone (femur) that was affected. [caption id=“attachment_8011501” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Image source: Getty Images.[/caption] “I wasn’t that scared when I heard (about the diagnosis). The doctors said that I could fight it since it was detected early, and my parents were supportive as well,” Aditya told myUpchar.   At first, chemotherapy was advised but after many consultations, it was decided that surgery was required. “They performed surgery on his femur, took out the tumour and put a plate and screws to keep the bone intact,” Om Prakash, Aditya’s father said. Little did the family know then that they were in for a long battle. Aditya was in remission for two years following his surgery. “Every three months they would call me for a check-up to make sure the cancer had not returned or spread anywhere else. I was feeling fine and could walk everywhere, so I thought the issue was behind me,” he recounted.   Then one day, a follow-up revealed that the cancer was back. It had also spread to his lungs. The doctors recommended more chemotherapy and said Aditya’s leg needed to be amputated. The family was shocked, but not defeated. They scoured the internet and looked for doctors who could help them.   “I was sitting in my office when I got a call,” recalls Dr. Vivek Verma, consulting Orthopaedic Oncologist at Max Super Speciality Hospital, Vaishali. “It was a young-sounding voice and he told me he had osteosarcoma which had recurred. The doctors were telling him to get his leg amputated. He said he had seen videos of me performing surgeries online and asked if I could help. I told him to bring his reports over and come see me.”   Aditya and his family, residents of Pune, took the next flight out to Delhi to meet with Dr. Verma. “By the time he came to me he was in quite a lot of pain. He was wheelchair-bound and needed a walker to stand up. We took some X-rays that showed that the bone had been weakened by the cancer and the plate had broken through. His entire femur was infected with cancer and there were nodules in his lungs. This meant that his femur was not salvageable - we had to replace it with a prosthetic,” Dr. Verma explained. Aditya underwent a Total Femur Replacement (TFR), a complicated operation that needs to be performed by a highly trained specialist. In a surgery that lasted 10 hours, Dr. Verma carefully removed the femur from the body and a prosthetic bone was put in place. To complicate matters, the wounds from the previous surgery meant that tissue was getting stuck to the bone. Extra care needed to be taken to save as much of the tissue as possible. Despite the complications, it worked. “They made me start physiotherapy just two days after surgery! I put my entire weight on my new leg, and slowly learned how to walk again,” Aditya said. Dr. Verma explained the line of treatment that followed after surgery also appeared to be working. “We had to move Aditya to second-line chemotherapy. When we were satisfied that the tumours were shrinking and that he was responding to the treatment, we decided to surgically remove the tumours from the lung. That surgery has also gone off well.” Now 19 years old, Aditya is in remission again and chemotherapy continues. His parents’ optimism shines through when they speak about their brave son, and they are optimistic about him making a complete recovery. Aditya’s father travels between Delhi and Pune frequently for work while his mother stays with him as he unflinchingly takes on the daunting disease.   Aditya may have not seen the four walls of a school classroom since 2015, but he cleared his class 12 examinations through correspondence. College is the next step, but it will have to wait for a while. This is the fourth and final article in a special series on World Cancer Day, which was on February 4. For more information, please read our article on   bone cancer_._ Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, India’s first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health.