A woman whose femur bone shattered while she was sat on the couch thought she was going to die on the operating table after being diagnosed with a life-threatening illness
Lucy Worthington had only walked to the bathroom and back to relax on the sofa when her leg broke in half, leaving her in the most excruciating pain.
The terrifying incident happened in September last year and it came after she had begun experiencing pain in her right knee. An X-ray failed to show anything so she assumed it was just an injury from a drunken night out and started having physiotherapy to try and ease it.
However, after it became apparent the treatment wasn’t working and a ‘grapefruit-sized lump’ grew on her leg, she was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.
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Lucy, 20, from Bristol reveals the pain started following a fall on a boozy night out. “I thought I had just gotten drunk and hurt myself falling over, as time went on and the pain wasn’t going away I thought what I was told, that it was a physio issue and that I would do the exercises and it would go away,” she says. “I do a lot of walking and they thought it was a pulled muscle or a trapped nerve.”
Despite having three physio sessions, Lucy was still in agony and had developed a large lump above her knee. Describing her symptoms she says: “It felt like someone was crushing my knee, or grabbing it and twisting it, it was a very intense horrible pain that no painkillers would help. I was prescribed codeine and morphine and none of it would work.”
The physiotherapist suggested she went back to her GP, who referred her for more imaging, which would reveal the worst possible news. “As soon as my GP felt the lump, her face dropped. She realised something was seriously wrong and referred me for an MRI scan,” she recalls.
“I was diagnosed with sarcoma and I was told it’s rare and aggressive. Now I know that it [the lump] was my tumour that had started to grow out of my bone.”
Sarcoma is a type of cancer that can grow anywhere in the body. In the UK 15 people a day are diagnosed with sarcoma, which equates to around 5,300 people a year. There are two main types of sarcoma: soft tissue sarcomas develop in supporting or connective tissue such as muscle, nerves, blood vessels, tendons and fatty tissues, according to Sarcoma UK. They usually affect the arms, legs and trunk and can also grow in the stomach, intestines and female reproductive system.
Bone sarcoma – also known as primary bone cancer – is much rarer. It makes up just 0.2% of all cancer diagnoses in England. It can affect any bone in the body but is more common in the legs.
Lucy’s tumour was around 14cm – about the size of a grapefruit – and she was told it was probably curable depending on how her body reacted to chemotherapy. It was before the treatment started that the horrific incident at home occurred due to her weakened bone density.
“Because of the type of cancer, I had no bone density in my femur so I just sat on the sofa and broke my leg,” she says reliving the terrifying day. “I had been to the bathroom and I walked back to the sofa on a walking stick because they told me not to put all my weight on one leg.
“My femur just shattered and it split my tumour in half. The pain was horrific, I broke the strongest bone in the human body. My mum heard the earth-shattering scream and ran in, called 999 and the longer the ambulance was taking, the more pain I was in.
“She called them back and told them I have bone cancer. At first I thought I just dislocated my knee but I couldn’t lift my leg up, it wasn’t hanging on to anything.”
In agony, she was admitted to hospital where she received the devastating news that her leg may have to be amputated. Going into the operating theatre and fearing for her life, she signed a consent form to say the amputation could take place if her leg couldn’t be saved.
“I definitely thought I could die – when I broke my leg and was admitted to hospital, me and my family thought I could die any minute, I was really not well,” she says.
“I went into this surgery not knowing if I would wake up with a leg or not. It was like a scene from Grey’s Anatomy. I was crying and telling him he saved my leg.”
Mercifully the surgeon did save Lucy’s leg and she began having chemotherapy. Unfortunately she didn’t respond well to it and initially developed sepsis but she persevered with the chemo and finished the course in June.
She now wants to warn others to take pain seriously and get it checked out. “If the tumour hadn’t grown out of the bone it could have been too late,” she reveals. “So any aches or pains please get them checked because you never know.”
She is now looking ahead to the future with positivity but is understandably a little fearful: “I’m feeling amazing, so happy,” she says. “I’m a bit scared of the scans to come in case it comes back or has gone anywhere else, but now I’m excited to get my life back on track.”