'My sore knee after heavy gym session turned out to be cancer – I'm only 27'

07 August 2023 , 08:44

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Amy Haigh said she struggled to exercise after she fell off a horse (Image: Jam Press/Amy Haigh)

A "healthy" gymgoer was left "horrified" when she was diagnosed with cancer after she initially thought her sore knee was caused by exercise.

Amy Haigh, 27, from Auckland, New Zealand, said she assumed the "dull ache" in her knee was a post-workout symptom or injury from when she suffered a fall from horse riding in March last year. The teacher said she visited two physiotherapists, a chiropractor and an osteopath but still felt "really off", it was only then that a personal trainer urged her to get checked out.

She went through a series of scans in the summer before she went for an MRI in September, where she was sadly diagnosed with high-grade bone cancer (osteosarcoma). The teacher said: "I lived a very active and healthy lifestyle and never, ever had any health issues besides the occasional cold. I have been training in the gym since 2019, I was an avid horse rider, I would spend the weekends walking my dogs or at the beach, and my job was also quite physically demanding.

“I was inconsolable. I cried in my car every day, I cried on my lunch break, and cried in the bathroom. I was horrified it was cancer, but there was also some relief because I had been trying to get to the bottom of this knee pain for so long. I knew something was wrong and I was unfortunately proven right.”

Amy feared she would need a knee replacement (Jam Press/Amy Haigh)

The early childhood teacher started chemotherapy at the end of October of that year and described her hospital stays as "awful." She told NeedToKnow.co.uk: "My cycles were 35 days long and also included a two-week hospital stay where I would get plenty of fluids to help flush the chemo out of my system. I found these stays absolutely awful because I felt so lonely and isolated. After my first round of chemotherapy, I was so sick, they had to lower my dose for the next cycle so I still had some quality of life.

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"I also had to have a PET scan which shows if the cancer has gone anywhere else in your body. Luckily, this scan came back clear on November 3rd 2022 which was a huge relief. I was told if it had gone to my lungs it would have been very difficult to treat.”

Amy assumed her 'sore knee' was due to an injury (Jam Press/Amy Haigh)

Amy went through two cycles of chemo before an operation in January 2023 to remove the cancerous bone on her femur and replace it with a donor bone from the US. She feared that she would have to have a knee replacement which was one of the risks of surgery.

She added: "My surgeon was incredible and managed to not only remove all of the cancerous bone but also save my knee joint. When they took out the bone it went to the lab for processing. It showed that all of the cancerous bone was removed and also that the cancer was a far lower grade than they thought.

"It showed that the strong chemo they had me on that targeted aggressive cancers with high cell turnover actually did nothing. They then said because the cancer was removed and there were no more cancerous cells in my body, that I was cancer free."

The teacher spent most of her time at the gym (Jam Press/Amy Haigh)

Amy continued to remain positive following her diagnosis (Jam Press/Amy Haigh)

But the harsh months of testing and surgery took a toll on Amy's mental health. She went from working out every day to "hardly being able to lift my head up off the couch" and said she "hated being reliant" on others. She added: “I was such an independent, carefree and spirited person who suddenly couldn't do anything for herself. I loved my career, I loved life and within a few weeks, it was all cruelly snatched away from me."

She has since started therapy to help process the huge change to her life and is making peace with her new normal – which includes reduced mobility and a further surgery to remove scar tissue from her knee joint, and having to leave work while her leg heals. “I am doing better now, it has taken a lot to get me to this point," she said.

Amy praised her sister and other family members for their support (Jam Press/Amy Haigh)

There was a lot of despair, so much grief for the life I had, the woman I was. I was so hurt at losing my hair, it felt like I lost myself. But I have also done so much growing in the last few months, I am so much stronger than I ever thought I was.

“I have come out of this with an entirely new view of the world. I want to go out and live my life, to say yes to the things I would say no to before. To travel and live for myself. After all, I definitely deserve it. My hair has started to grow back, thicker and more luscious than it ever had before - my hair was so thin."

However, Amy has managed to find a "silver lining" and said she can "still see the good" in her experience. She added: “I hope that sharing my story either comforts someone else who is experiencing the same thing or encourages another person to go to the doctor and get that sore leg checked out.”

Monica Charsley