by Catherine Knockwood
On October 1st I will be celebrating my one-year anniversary of my amputation. Now celebrating something like an amputation will raise some eyebrows but let me tell you WHY I came to this life changing decision.
2018 was quite the year for me. In the beginning of the summer my grandfather, Doug Knockwood passed away, and around that time I decided that I was going to remodel my daughter’s room. Well, I suffered what I thought was a minor injury of hyperextending my knee. That’s when things started to take a slow, but steady nosedive. Unknown to me, I had developed an extremely rare bone condition.
Giant Cell Tumor (GCT) is my official diagnosis. GCTs are a benign, and in some rarer cases, highly aggressive tumor. In the early stages, you may just brush the pain off as some mild ache and take an over the counter pain reliever. As times goes on, the tumor does get larger, the pain becomes more unbearable. I continued to carry on with the usual activities of summer fun, going to the beach, swimming, hiking, working out, but the pain never left me.
GCTs occur in one in a million people, majority of those afflicted are women, and between the ages of 19-39. I was 38 at the time of onset, oh lucky me. They can occur at any bone that meets a joint; this means that they can occur at the toes, the bones in the foot, the ankle, the knees, the hips, the spine, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists, the fingers, even at the base of the skull or jaw. It is a ver ...
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