"My life wouldn’t have been the same if the doctors hadn’t looked for an alternative to amputating my foot"

It was an accidental fall whilst rock climbing with his schoolmates that first raised concerns for Tiago’s family in June 2017. “I twisted my ankle, but I couldn’t seem to recover. Months went by and, despite treatment, the pain wouldn’t go away. There came a point when we began to suspect it wasn’t just a sprain,” recalls the young man. As the pain was constant, his parents took him to SJD Barcelona Chuldren's Hospital in February 2018, where he was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in the heel of his right foot.

“When they told me I had cancer, I wasn’t really aware of what was happening. I was 13 at the time and the first thing I thought was that I wouldn’t have to go to school for a while,” recalls this young Portuguese man, who was living in Matadepera at the time, where his family had settled for work reasons. Tiago didn’t truly realise the seriousness of his illness until he started chemotherapy and learnt that he might lose his foot. “I’ve always loved sport. I was playing football at the time, and the thought of losing my foot really got me down. My life wouldn’t be the same if Dr Torner and his team hadn’t found an alternative to amputating my foot,” he says.

The team treating Tiago considered performing a bone transplant to replace the affected bone and reconstruct the heel. Dr Ferran Torner, head of the Sarcomas and Musculoskeletal Tumours Unit at SJD Barcelona, explains that reconstructing the calcaneus bone is extremely difficult and that, on top of this, was compounded by the fact that blood and tissue banks do not usually stock calcaneal bones. “We had to make a special request and wait for a compatible donor to come forward,” recalls Torner.

Finally, on 22 May 2018, Tiago went into the operating theatre. The operation was a success; the boy recovered quickly and was discharged a few months later. Today, he plays sport and occasionally runs marathons. “Thanks to Sant Joan de Déu, and the dedication and innovative spirit of its staff, I now lead a normal life. I am very grateful and have very fond memories of the hospital, both for the professionalism of the staff and for their compassion,” says the young man, who is now 21 and lives and works in Brazil as a computer engineer for a German multinational.