Fighting Back

 Antwahn Boyce–Vaughan loves electronic devices.

by Kimberley Cummins

When you first meet Antwahn Boyce–Vaughan he appears like any other teen.

Interested in video games, hanging with friends, not too talkative, likes riding his bicycle and loves his electronic devices.

But on closer examination, he is far from ordinary.

Antwahn is an amputee.

In August 2017, he was riding his bicycle as normal, when he began experiencing pain in his right knee.

Antwahn was 16 then and the pain was at first brushed off as “growing pains”, until it began to intensify as each day went on.

Because of this, his mother, Tonia Boyce decided to take him to the first doctor who diagnosed it as a “ligament injury”.

That seemed quite plausible, after all, he rode his bike multiple times a day. Cataflam was the prescribed treatment. But the cataflam would kill the pain but only for a short while before it returned. This then led the family to have an x-ray done from which the second doctor identified Antwahn’s issue as “Myositis ossificans with possible calcification of the muscle”. A third doctor suggested it was “arthritis”, and again cataflam was prescribed for both diagnoses.

“When I took the cataflam it was basically killing off the fluid in my knee and stopped it from hurting but then when I stopped taking it, I don’t know how a broken bone would feel but I guess that was how it felt,” Antwahn said.

The pain and swelling increased, to the point that Antwahn began to limp and became unable to get around only with the assistance of crutches.

So at her wits end, Tonia again sought the advice of another medical practitioner.

This time the doctor insisted a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan should be carried out.

Just two months after Antwahn’s pains began, his mother’s heart sunk when the results of that MRI revealed he had osteosarcoma.

 Osteosarcoma is a rare bone cancer that eats tissue and bone. Antwahn’s cancer was from the end of the femur going into the knee down to the tibia.

This was a difficult pill for the mother of four to swallow.

“I never read one document so much expecting to see something different than what I was seeing,” she said in a trembling voice almost reliving the moment.

“I didn’t believe it because he wasn’t sick. He just said, ‘mummy my knee hurting’ and I was thinking it was an injury or growing pains– something [but] not a diagnosis of cancer.”

The survival rate for osteosarcoma is pretty good as long as it is detected early. However, the thing about this disease is from the time it starts to hurt it is at a late stage.

 The news was a shocker and a rocker for the single mother but even more difficult was finding a way to break it to Antwahn.

Casting her mind back to that day, Tonia described it as emotionally draining. Especially when she spoke the dreaded word “cancer” aloud. Antwahn’s sole response in the moment was a blank stare at his mum in disbelief.

 “I told Antwahn this isn’t a flu that will last for two weeks, this is a long haul. All battles are won in your mind before anything else so you go to think positive and there are things you can do to help the situation . . . .  I told him I saw people with stage 4 cancer and recover. So you have to have a strong mind and a strong will to survive something like this because cancer is not for the faint hearted. It is not. It takes you through so many different emotions. Things that you didn’t expect that you could feel you would feel,” she said.

While Tonia tried to maintain a positive outlook for the sake of her children even when January 2018 arrived and the scary prospect that Antwahn had to begin chemotherapy was evident, in the back of her mine she was simply praying for the best.

Nearing tears, Tonia recalled the toll that those nine months of chemo took on Antwahn’s body to the point where he was less than 100 lbs, had no hair on his body and had to wear diapers.

She felt helpless seeing her child in that condition knowing all she could do was pray and have a brave face.

“I was there every step of the way. I slept in the hospital pun every ward he went on– B5, C12, A6. And I had to know and understand everything that was going on . . . . I knew his protocol, I knew when he was supposed to have his chemo, I know every drug he was getting, the procedures for administering medications,” Tonia lamented.

For Antwahn the process not only stressed him physically but emotionally.

“When I went to sleep I would mostly wake up in the morning with my teeth hurting from grinding [them] in the night. I had back pains. I was vomiting. Most of the time I was basically miserable and bored. After I would get a sort of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder] when I go to the hospital and just see the saline bags, I would get afraid and get panic attacks,” he said.

By May, about four months after chemo started, Tonia recognised that Antwahn was going to lose his leg. To ensure that his adjustment period was not as hard as it could have been she made contact with other young amputees to share their experiences and reassure him of his situation.

On September 10, 2018, seven days before his 18 th birthday, Antwahn’s right foot was amputated above the knee.

Antwahn admitted that there have been some frustrating periods during his journey, like the inquisitive people who are constantly staring.

Yet other times have been rewarding like when he learned to ride his bike again but with his prosthetic leg and when for the first time in two years he was able to walk unassisted, even if only for a few seconds.

The young man maintained that acceptance and confidence were coming increasingly with time.

"I think when you're presented in a situation like this, you can either dwell or you can get on with it. . . . Adjustment was hard at first but since I started walking with it and with therapy it is getting easier. I started learning to walk again but it is just that I can’t walk without the walker. However, I [am] trying to put less weight on the walker and put more weight onto the leg but it is really hard because my stump is still weak so the knee just constantly collapsing. So I just got to try to strengthen the stump,” Antwahn asserted.

Health wise, on last August 9 they received the results from Antwahn’s last CAT scan performed in July, which revealed his was cancer free.

 Antwahn and his mother Tonia are still adjusting to the change.

Seventeen months after his life changed forever Antwahn is still learning to adjust but his mother was confident that with continued family support he

will make it through his journey and be stronger than ever.

“Cancer takes everything you have and you have to fight with everything you have,” Tonia advised.