Dear Jack
Foundation

Kaitlin

Active LifeList Participant

In January of 2022. When I was 29 years old I was diagnosed with Osteosarcoma bone cancer that was found in my tibia. I completed nine months of incredibly intense chemotherapy and underwent a limb salvage surgery which included a full knee replacement along with a big chunk of my tibia. It took me about seven months after surgery to learn to walk again and about a year to gain back any sort of real physical stamina and independence. After finishing my chemotherapy in October, I had a chest CT in January of 2023. It showed that I had a lung metastasis that was growing. I had lung surgery to have the nodule removed and then enjoyed about nine months of no cancer treatments or surgeries before cancer was found again in my leg as well as in my lymph nodes and many new nodules in my lungs. In November of last year, I started chemotherapy again but it was not very effective. The tumor in my leg continued to grow to the point where I could no longer put weight on my leg or use it in any functional way. At the same time I was having multiple daily fevers of up to 104 that, after much investigation, had no other explanation other than being a “tumor fever.” On January 31st of 2024, I received an above knee amputation and while I was sad to lose my leg I was happy to find that my fevers stopped and I gained a new sort of independence and mobility that I had lost before surgery, even though that meant hopping around with a walker. I continued on the same chemotherapy that had shown overall “stable” results in my lungs, meaning some things grow and some things shrink. I made a brief pause to radiate a couple of spots that had been growing more than the rest, and then continued chemo. This continued until we decided to switch to a specialty hospital, not because we were unhappy with the original team, but because I am on the last approved traditional treatment and we know that being in a place with many clinical trials will be important to me in the near future.

Kaitlin’s LifeList:

  1. A beach trip

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