22 January 2023 , 12:26
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A woman has been told she has rare bone cancer after being misdiagnosed three times.
Medical experts first informed Sarah-Jayne Wilson that her leg and knee pain was tendonitis.
They then said it was 'shin splints' before diagnosing her with Osgood-Schlatter, a common ailment football players often develop.
A private physiotherapist later urged her to have an MRI scan which then showed she had Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, CoventryLive reports.
Now she is is undergoing gruelling and intensive chemotherapy followed by an operation to replace her knee and part of her tibia.
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Sarah of Coventry, West Midlands, said the horrifying situation has been going on for more than a year -and it started with an initial call to her doctors at The Grange Medical Centre.
Sarah-Jayne with fiancee James Gould (Coventry Live WS)She said: "I have been having knee pain and you know you just brush something off and don't think about it.
"Well it got to the point where I couldn't walk properly or kneel, so the first time I ever rang the doctors, they diagnosed me over the phone.
"They diagnosed me with tendonitis. They told me not to kneel on it, and go swimming."
The pain did not go away and it got to the point where she could not walk so she went to the Accident and Emergency department at the George Eliot Hospital.
She added: "He (the doctor) told me that I had shin splints and that I shouldn't have gone to A&E.
"I Googled shin splints and I don't run, you associate that with running, so I thought 'okay'."
But the pain continued and Sarah-Jayne ended up back in A&E again after falling over.
"They X-rayed me and told me that it was Osgood-Schlatter, which is what teenage boys get when they play football," the 27-year-old explained.
"They showed me the X-Ray and said 'yes, definitely Osgood-Schlatter, here's some painkillers, go swimming and it will heal up on its own and get some physio'."
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She called her doctors to book an appointment to see a physio and was told that she would have to wait weeks, so her work, BT OpenReach, got her a private physio.
Sarah-Jayne added. "She (the physio) said 'that's not Osgood-Schlatter, it is not healing, it is not getting any smaller, something is reacting to it.
"At this point I could barely walk, my leg was all swollen and hot to touch."
The physiotherapist wrote a letter to her doctors saying she needed an MRI scan and the intervention led her to finally finding out what was wrong.
An MRI showed she had an aggressive and rare form of bone cancer called Ewing’s sarcoma.
She has two tumours, one in her shin bone and one on the side, just under her knee.
Sarah-Jayne said: "It is so aggressive, they were worried that it had spread.
"I had so many scans, and within the space of a month I had two operations because the chemo is going to make me infertile."
The chemotherapy is especially invasive over five days straight. She then has a week off and the treatment starts again.
She said: "It (the cancer) can go through to all of your brittle bones - your pelvis, your fingers, your toes, your ankles - luckily, for some reason, it has just stayed in my leg.
Her ordeal will not be over once she has finished the nine rounds of chemotherapy and a huge operation.
She said: "If it has shrunk enough I have got to have a whole new knee and half of my tibia replaced.
"Then more chemo again to check it has not gone anywhere else, then, after the second round, a foot drop operation because all of my nerves died to my foot. So my foot is completely dead."
She can receive her treatment is at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and said: "They are honestly amazing,
I have never known anything like it, everyone on the cancer ward is so lovely," she said.
She said: "It is tough, especially when you are there for five days. For the first few days, you feel like 'okay, you've got this' but the third and fourth day, you are just absolutely drained from all of it.
"My family are shocked, no one expected it.
"My nan said she would have took it off me in a heartbeat.
"We have just been through breast cancer with my mum through Covid, that was hard, now it is me. It is hard."
She has urged anyone who has a medical complaint and feels that it is not being taken seriously to get a second opinion.
She said: "You trust doctors, you trust that they are going to look after you but I would say that if it is not healing, or not getting better, to get a second opinion.
"You never ever know what it could be."
The Mirror has contacted the Grange Medical Centre for comment.
A spokesman for George Elliot Hospital said: "We are sorry to hear of Ms Wilson’s experience.
"We are unable to comment on an individual’s care and treatment, but we do invite Ms Wilson to get in contact with us so we can investigate her concerns further."
Sarah's fiancee James Gould is to undertake his own challenge in her honour for the Bone Cancer Trust by cycling from Vietnam to Cambodia next year
James, 33, who also works for BT OpenReach, said Sarah's bravery inspired him to get into the saddle.
He said "It's six days cycling and works out to about 350 miles,"
"There is a 20-week training plan but, for me, because I don't like riding a bike, the training pretty much starts now.
"It is supporting such a good cause, it is one of the rarest cancers and so therefore the funding for it is not very high and the awareness around bone cancer itself is really low."
He hopes to raise £4,000 ahead of his charity challenge in February next year.
Anyone who would like to donate should visit a justgiving fundraising page.