Angie is one of the most vivacious, high-spirited 14-year-olds I have ever met. She is very passionate about cheering in school, which she has done every season for the last 3 years, doing hair, and makeup.

Around June 2024, Angie started feeling a lot of pain and discomfort in her knee, which we all thought was from cheer. After a few months, her leg started to look as if it was swelling, and the pain had increased. At this time, we started the process of testing to see what was going on. For the past 3 months, we have been going to many specialists and having test after test, all resulting in the same answer. Angie has had x-rays, multiple MRIs, multiple CT scans, multiple blood draws, and a biopsy of her leg. The imaging tests all showed a large tumor coming out of her knee bone and connecting through tissue, cartilage, and wrapping down nearly 3/4 of her tibia leg bone. Imaging showed a lot of characteristics which concerned them for cancer, which led to a biopsy of the tumor to get a final determination (biopsy was sent to the Mayo Clinic). All testing has shown she has a rare bone cancer called osteosarcoma. They have been able to determine it has not spread to her lungs, and with this type of cancer, that is the first place it usually spreads.

Angie has a PET scan on January 20 to make sure it has not spread to any other bones within her body, and she has another surgery scheduled for January 23 to place the port into her chest for her chemotherapy treatments. Her chemotherapy treatments will all be done inpatient at Riley's Children's Hospital. If Angie responds well to the treatment, the goal is to do chemo for 10 weeks; she will have what they consider her major surgery on week 11 and then start back on chemo week 12. If she responds well to the treatment, then they are expecting a 30-week or so treatment (close to 8 months). The specialists said the major surgery is detrimental to her, but the only thing that is going to save her life will be the chemotherapy. During chemo, they have already let us know she will have lots of testing on her blood, her heart, and her hearing because the chemo will affect these. She will require lots of blood transfusions as well as platelet transfusions, but they will test these levels each time before she's administered her chemo. It can affect her heart and hearing, which is why they want to monitor those because if either weakens, they will have to stop that chemo medication until her heart gets stronger or her hearing improves, and then they will pick it back up, which will extend the chemo timeframe.

The reason her surgery is considered a major one is because of the size of the tumor and how extensively it's wrapped throughout things. For her surgery, we were given 4 options: a full amputation above the knee with a prosthetic; a full amputation above the knee followed by rotationplasty, where they will take her ankle and foot, turn it backwards, and attach it to her thigh area where the ankle will work as a knee but her foot would be backwards forever and slide into a special prosthetic; to try to save her leg, they will have to remove the knee and almost 3/4 of her tibia bone and replace it filled with metal hardware to reconstruct the missing bones. However, it will be difficult because the band on the knee needed to attach to the metal is wrapped in the tumor, and if they can get it attached, she will still have limited mobility; and the last option is called an allograft, where they would remove everything like the previous option and send her info and images to a donor bank to look for a donor bone from a deceased individual that's close to what she needs that they can modify. With this option, her surgeon said she will have a long road of cosmetic surgeries because of the amount of skin he will need to remove. She will need lots of skin grafts and reconstruction as well as possibly needing a flap for some time. We are leaning towards the allograft option as that's what Angie wants, we prefer, and her surgeon confirmed it is safe.

Right now, she has been going to appointments over 1 hour away 2 to 3 times a week. In a couple of weeks, she will start going down to Riley's weekly for the next 8+ months. With Angie's current help needed, the number of appointments, and the around-the-clock upcoming care she is going to need, I won't be working to be caring for her. We just ordered a special wheelchair for her because she went from crutches to a walker, but with each day she has less and less movement ability in that leg, so it's becoming harder to use even a walker. We are trying to prepare for our trips to appointments and her inpatient chemo treatments, prepare for things she is going to need as the doctor said it's a matter of time before she loses full mobility in that leg, as well as trying to find things for her to do during the drives and hospital stays.

One thing that we talked to her about, and she would really like to work on, is getting supplies to make things and put together baggies with special messages and her name to drop off baskets to different cancer centers to boost other children fighting cancer. We have a very long road ahead of us, one of which we will never fully be prepared for. We currently are taking it day by day, appointment by appointment. Angie has her good days and her rougher days; she has her moments of goofiness as well as sadness; she has days where her pain and her stomach are tolerable, whereas others, all she can do is sleep because she's so exhausted, hurting, and feeling sick.

We are asking for any help during this process, even if it's just prayer chains. We are beyond grateful to everyone's positive messages, reaching out, and consistently praying for our family. As more updates come about and as her treatment progresses, we will keep everybody updated.