A dream comes true for a young cancer survivor

6 years after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma, Subasree is all set to study medicine at MMC

From being a patient diagnosed with osteosarcoma at the age of 11, S. Subasree’s dream of donning the white coat has come true. The 17-year-old, who underwent resection of the distal femur with the entire left knee joint and reconstruction with a prosthesis in 2016, is all set to study medicine at Madras Medical College, moving a step closer to her goal of specialising in surgical oncology.

When she was 11, a constant pain in her left leg led to a diagnosis that left her parents, S. Sankar and Kalaiselvi, shocked. In a 9-month struggle, they saw her go through six cycles of chemotherapy and a complicated surgery, and cope with a prosthesis. But the pain and the struggle only made Subasree stronger. “I had the desire to become a doctor from a young age. This disease only made my desire even stronger. In cancer, the body will have no strength, but your mind needs to have the will power to fight. I thought to myself that If I become an oncologist, I will be an example to my patients,” she said.

“At the Cancer Institute (WIA), we diagnosed Subasree with osteosarcoma (bone tumour) that affected a part of the thigh bone, the femur. Usually, in a surgery, we go through the joint (trans-articular resection) to remove the bone cancer. In her case, the surgery was complicated due to knee joint involvement. We went outside the joint and had to perform an extra-articular resection, in which we removed the entire knee joint along with the cancer as one block. Extra-articular resections are complicated procedures and are not easy to perform,” said Anand Raja, professor, Department of Surgical Oncology, Cancer Institute.