Boy Saved From Bone Cancer After Doctors Put His Foot On Backwards

A toddler has been saved from severe bone cancer after surgeons decided to put his foot on backwards.

Mum Julie Ford, 26, told That’s Life that she didn’t think anything was wrong at first when she noticed her toddler son, Maxwell had a ‘funny waddle’.

In October last year, the family’s nanny had noticed that Maxwell’s right foot looked slightly ‘turned out’, and three days later, Maxwell, who is now almost two, suddenly couldn’t put any weight on the foot, and had gone back to crawling again.

Julie and her partner Greg, 29, rushed Max to the doctor, who thought it was just a virus and told them to come back after a week. However, Max’s symptoms didn’t improve, so they asked the doctors to do an X-ray, where doctors found a shadow around his knee, but still didn’t think the issue was serious, and only advised Julie and Greg to keep a closer eye on it.

However, that very same day, Max was brought into emergency, where a biopsy found that he had osteosarcoma, a malignant bone cancer, in his knee.

Max then underwent 29 weeks of chemotherapy at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, and the family stayed there for nine months.

After the first round of chemotherapy, Max’s orthopaedic surgeon suggested to do a rotationplasty on Max, which meant they would have to remove the boy’s cancerous knee, as well as eight centimetres of his thigh bone and part of his shin bone.

The remaining part of his limb would then be reattached – backwards, meaning his heel would be at the front, toes would be pointing back and an ankle joint will be placed where his knee used to be. Plates and screws would hold the joint together as it healed, and eventually, doctors said, it would be functioning. Max would also use a prosthetic as he got older without pain, and would be allowed ‘even more movement’ due to the joint.

The eight-hour operation was done in April and Max was the youngest child to ever undergo rotationplasty at the Melbourne hospital.

Seeing her son for the first time since the operation, Julie, who was warned that it may be ‘distressing’ to see Max at first with the reattached joint, didn’t have a problem with it at all, and was just happy that her son was alive.

Julie said that even her son is fascinated by his new leg and ‘doesn’t seem phased by the change’, she said.