Children’s Art Project gives osteosarcoma survivor meaningful experiences as both a child and an adult
Jordan Rance was only 11 years old when she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma in 2005.
“I didn’t have any symptoms,” she says. “I got hit in the right leg while playing a softball game. When it didn’t get better after a few weeks, I had an X-ray. It turned out to be sarcoma.”
After overcoming their initial shock, Jordan’s parents took her to MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital. There, several rounds of chemotherapy and...
Half of my pelvis is gone, but I’m a happy, normal 18-year-old
Discovering I had bone cancer when I was only 12 forced me to mature very quickly. Doctors found a growth about the size of an orange in my...
5 questions about bone health and cancer
Losing bone density is common as you age, when cells that help rebuild bones aren’t replaced as quickly. Because of this, your bones may become...
MD Anderson saved my life — and my adolescent daughter’s
Cancer doesn’t run in my family or my husband’s. Only one of my ancestors had it: my paternal grandmother died of lung cancer when I was 11. But she was 64 and a long-time smoker, so her diagnosis didn’t really come as a surprise.
What did come as a surprise was my own metastatic melanoma diagnosis in August 2013 — and my daughter’s metastatic osteosarcoma diagnosis just one year later. I was 42 when I learned that I had cancer...
How I reinvented myself after an osteosarcoma diagnosis
After losing most of my right leg at age 14 in November 2010 due to osteosarcoma, it was really hard for me to give up gymnastics. It had...
4 things every parent should know about MD Anderson
As the parent of a cancer patient, when you first step through the doors of MD Anderson, you’re terrified. You’re not supposed to be here....
5 things we learned from our daughter’s rotationplasty
In September 2014, when she was just eight years old, our daughter Elise was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer. It was in...
Teen osteosarcoma survivor: ‘I can still do anything’
I never realized how many children got cancer until I came to MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital. But the story of how I got there is...
Remembering my brother, James Ragan
I tried to write about my brother James Ragan’s path through the world of cancer and the things we learned from it, but thinking of certain...
The silver lining in a pediatric osteosarcoma diagnosis
When 12-year-old Caroline Richards first mentioned a pain in her right arm last December, her mother, Lauren, chalked it up to a minor injury...