It started with one word that shattered everything — osteosarcoma.
In an instant, life shifted from races and plans to survival, chemo, and pain.

Weeks later, the doctor gave me two choices: save the leg but never run again, or amputate and one day run with a prosthetic.
I asked only one question — “Which one lets me run?”

The answer was clear.
So I said goodbye to my leg — terrified, grieving, but determined.

The first time I stood with my running blade, I fell hard.
But I laughed.
Because for the first time, I felt alive again.

I don’t regret it — not for a second.
Losing my leg didn’t take away who I am.
It revealed it.

Now, when I run, I don’t feel broken.
I feel whole.

Read more of his powerful story in the comments below. 

Losing a Leg, Finding My Freedom — My Journey Through Osteosarcoma

💛 The Choice to Run Again — One Man’s Journey Through Osteosarcoma 💛

In 2017, everything I thought I knew about strength, control, and the human body changed with one word.

Osteosarcoma.

It’s strange how a diagnosis can rearrange everything in a single moment.
One minute, you’re planning your next race, your next game, your next weekend with friends — and the next, you’re talking about survival, surgery, and chemotherapy.

Osteosarcoma is a rare form of bone cancer — and when I heard it, I remember feeling like the air had been sucked out of the room.
The doctor’s lips kept moving, explaining treatments, timelines, percentages.

But my mind had already gone blank.
I remember staring at the floor, my hands cold and shaking, wondering how something inside me had betrayed me so completely.

Still, there wasn’t time to grieve.

When cancer enters your life, it moves fast.
Within a week, I was sitting in a chemotherapy chair, surrounded by machines, tubes, and a quiet kind of fear that hums through the whole ward.

The first cycle hit hard.
Nausea, fatigue, bone pain — all of it.
It stripped away my energy, my hair, and at times, my spirit.
But it also stripped away something else — fear.

After a while, when you’re pushed that far down, you stop being afraid.You just fight.

Ten weeks later, my body felt like it had aged decades, but the scans showed the treatment had helped.

The next step was surgery.
And that’s when the real decision came.

My surgeon laid it out clearly.
I had two options.

Option one: Limb salvage — removing the tumor but keeping the leg, with a metal rod replacing part of the bone.

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Option two: Above-the-knee amputation.

I remember the sterile light in that room, the hum of the monitor, the way the surgeon’s tone softened when he said, “Neither choice is easy.”

He was right.

But for me, there was one question that mattered more than all the others.
I looked him in the eye and asked, “Which option would give me the best chance to

run again?”

Running wasn’t just a hobby.
It was freedom.
It was the one place where my body and my mind worked as one — no noise, no expectations, just motion.

I couldn’t imagine a life without it.

The surgeon hesitated.
He explained that limb salvage might preserve the leg, but it would be weaker, prone to complications, and most likely, I’d never run properly again.

With an amputation, however, I could one day get a prosthetic blade — one designed for running, for movement, for speed.

That was it.
The answer was clear.

After long talks with my family and endless nights lying awake, I made my choice:

an above-the-knee amputation.

It sounds brave when I say it now.
But the truth is, I was terrified.
Terrified of what I’d look like.
Terrified of the pain.
Terrified that I might never feel like

myself again.

The night before surgery, I sat in the hospital bed, staring at my leg under the thin white sheet.
Every scar, every freckle, every bruise from childhood football matches — they all flashed before my eyes.

How strange, I thought, to say goodbye to a part of yourself.

The morning of the operation, I tried to smile.
The nurses were kind.
My family was strong for me.

But when they rolled me into the operating room, I felt like I was stepping into a void.

When I woke up, everything was quiet.
My leg was gone.
And for a few seconds, I couldn’t breathe.

Grief comes in waves — even when it’s about a limb.
There’s the shock, then the realization, and finally, the reckoning.
The pain was unbearable, but so was the thought that my body was no longer whole.

But over time, something changed.
I started to notice small victories.
The first time I sat up on my own.
The first time I moved from the bed to the wheelchair without help.
The first time I laughed again, genuinely, without feeling guilty for it.

Those moments saved me.

Four months later, I finished chemotherapy.
By February of the next year, I was officially done with treatment.
The doctors called it completion, but to me, it felt more like rebirth.

The chemo had left me weak, my body fragile, but my spirit — oddly — stronger than ever.
I had learned what it meant to start over.
To rebuild from the ground up.

When I first saw a running blade, my heart skipped.
It wasn’t just a piece of carbon fiber.
It was a symbol — a promise.
A reminder that even in loss, there can be movement.

The first time I tried it on, I fell.
Hard.
But I laughed.
Because for the first time in months, I felt the ground beneath me and the wind on my face.
And I knew — I would run again.

Training was exhausting.
Every step was a lesson in patience.
Learning to balance.
Learning to fall without fear.
Learning to trust a part of me that wasn’t made of flesh and bone, but of resilience and hope.

People often ask if I regret my decision.
Not for a second.
Losing my leg didn’t take away who I am.
If anything, it revealed me.

I used to run because I loved the thrill.
Now I run because it reminds me that nothing — not even cancer — can stop the human will to move forward.

When I run, I don’t feel broken.
I feel whole.

And maybe that’s the greatest victory of all.

Because life, I’ve learned, isn’t about the things we lose.
It’s about how fiercely we chase what remains.