Hospital Team ‘Is Like Family’ to Young Patient Living With Prosthetic Leg
Savannah Solivan
(Photo courtesy of Jillian Gateley and family)
Savannah, a 12-year-old from North Andover, Mass., loves gymnastics, soccer and swimming — activities she is enjoying two years after being diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, and adjusting to living with a prosthetic leg. Savannah’s mother, Jillian, credits a multidisciplinary team at Mass General for Children (MGfC) in Boston for their compassionate care and extraordinary expertise during a “lengthy, harrowing medical journey.”
At age 10, Savannah started feeling pain in her right leg. X-rays showed a large mass on her right tibia, and further tests revealed it was a cancerous tumor. One piece of good news: The cancer had not spread.
Alison Friedmann, M.D., clinical director of the pediatric hematology/oncology unit at MGfC, led Savannah’s care team, which involved clinicians from orthopedics, orthopedic oncology surgery and radiation oncology as well as pharmacists, nurses qualified to administer chemotherapy medications, child life specialists and therapists, and many other health care professionals. “There’s just so much that goes into treating a child with cancer, which is why it’s almost done exclusively at academic medical centers like Mass General,” Friedmann observed.
Savannah’s treatment began with 10 weeks of chemotherapy, followed by a nine-hour surgery and then several more months of chemotherapy. After that, she endured several more surgeries as doctors tried to save her leg, which wasn’t healing well and became infected. A home care nurse visited two times a week to help Jillian with wound care.
Twenty-one months after the initial diagnosis, Savannah, Jillian and an orthopedic oncology surgeon discussed the prognosis and decided a below-the-knee amputation was “the best path forward.” A prosthetic leg would give Savannah the chance to enjoy the athletic activities she loved, and saving her leg wouldn’t.
A Mass General orthopedic and oncology surgeon and two plastic surgeons performed the amputation using targeted muscle reinnervation, an innovative procedure that reroutes amputated nerves to new muscle targets. The goal is to prevent phantom limb pain.
After a successful surgery and then being fitted with a prosthetic leg, Savannah continued to receive therapy and began to walk again.
Jillian said the MGfC care team was “like family,” helping her get through one of the hardest things “I could ever imagine going through as a parent.” Jillian and the health care team praised Savannah’s maturity and resilience throughout her cancer treatments and surgeries as she now “transitions to her new normal.”