Ken’s Story in His Own Words
Being raised in Detroit, my parents moved the family to Southfield Michigan in to order to give us a better education. I was very active in high school. I played three sports and two musical instruments. Going into my senior year I expected to play sports and was chosen to be the Drum Major of the marching band. As with any school physical activity, you are required to get a physical every year before playing. I went to see my normal physician and at the end of my physical he asked me the normal final questions from a checklist. The last question was if there was anything else he should know about. Not thinking anything of it, I casually said “well my knee has been bothering me, but I am doing summer track and have been hitting it on the hurdles.” Little did I know that one statement would change my life forever. The doctor told me to get a quick x-ray to make sure I haven’t
broken or chipped any bones. After the x-ray he told me he saw something but wasn’t quite sure what it was and asked me to go see a specialist. He was very calm and so I was not alarmed by his request. At that time, I thought I may have had a slight fracture that would require rest for a couple of weeks. After seeing a specialist, I remember driving home with my dad, and he was very somber which was not like him. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “Well it turns out what they thought was nothing was something.” Being a young kid, I still didn’t catch on, so I proceeded to turn up the radio and ignored his statement. When I got home, he told my mom and she burst into tears. That was the first time I heard the words cancer. I remember going out to my car (a beat-up red Monte Carlo that was handed down to me from my two older sisters after they left for college). Once again I sought music as my refuge and I blasted my radio and sat there wondering what was next for me. I remember the song Who’s Gonna Drive You Home by the Cars was playing and at that moment, I thought I was going to die, because to a young mind like mine, cancer lead to death. Later that night, after my mom composed herself, she informed me I had a fast spreading cancer and they had to operate quickly before it spread to my lungs. Within 24 hours I dropped out of school and went through a series of doctors visits from orthopedic surgeons to oncologists.
On one of my appointments I was told that I had a choice. They could amputate my leg and that would give me a 90% chance the cancer wouldn’t come back or they could do this new fusion surgery that would give me a 65% chance the cancer would return. My parents left it up to me and I immediately said I will take the 65 % and you can take the leg if it comes back. Now that I think about it, if the cancer came back it would have probably been too late to do amputation, but I have always been a risk taker so I was going for it! My cancer was diagnosed as osteogenic sarcoma. It was a then rare form of bone cancer but was known by many because it was the same cancer that caused then Senator Edward Kennedy Jr. to lose his leg. In fact, I received a letter from him wishing