A Brave Teenager Makes a Choice

Living with Cancer

SG Buckley

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Photo by Angiola Harry on Unsplash

She’s 14 years old and feels a pain in her leg. She plays soccer, volleyball, basketball, and runs track. She’s a competitive skier. She assumes the pain is a minor sports injury.

Six months pass, but the pain remains. Her mother takes her to the doctor. The mother and daughter are told it’s water in her leg, and nothing to worry about.

Two more months go by but now it hurts every time the teenager walks up stairs or goes to the park to meet friends. She knows the pain isn’t normal. She sees another doctor.

After a series of scans and blood tests, the doctor asks to speak to the mother in private. She’s told her daughter has a rare form of aggressive bone cancer called osteosarcoma. The doctor says she may not want to tell the daughter, but the mother tells her straight away.

Devastated, the two go home to share the news with the rest of the family. Being a positive and united family force, they immediately kick into action, identifying the best treatments possible in Georgia, the country where they live, and in their native Denmark.

Today the girl is 18, a young woman. She’s been through rounds of chemotherapy in both Georgia and Denmark, but they haven’t cured her. Recently, she decided to stop further treatment. She wants to…

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SG Buckley
SG Buckley

Written by SG Buckley

Writer, editor, parent. Former staffer at Quartz, WSJ and Inc. magazine.

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