Samantha Bodger was forced to choose.
“It was hard, but looking back I don’t regret the choice I made,” said 18-year-old Bodger, a first-year communication student. “I had to decide to go ahead and have my leg amputated and now I am 1 1/2 years cancer-free.”
At age 16, Bodger was playing soccer when she thought she may have sprained her ankle and treated it as such. She was diagnosed with osteosarcoma a few months later.
Bodger was forced to leave school and move into a pediatric cancer wing to further her treatment.
After four months of chemotherapy, Bodger was given a choice – she could save her leg but have an almost useless ankle, or she could amputate her leg from the knee down.
Osteosarcoma is the most common type of bone cancer and occurs most frequently in people less than 25 years old. When treated correctly, patients with localized high-grade osteosarcoma have a survival rate of roughly 70 percent.
Bodger completed six months of chemotherapy after her amputation, totaling 10 months of treatment.
As a student at UCLA, Bodger joined the Bruins Fighting Pediatric Cancer club, through which she and other members work to raise awareness and funds for pediatric cancer survivors and their families.
“Events that support specifically pediatric cancer (patients) are more few and far between than events that support cancer (patients) in general,” Bodger said. “It gets a lot less funding from the government than other types of (cancer research), so it’s really cool to see such a big event like this.”