I discovered the magic of being in the
mountains when I needed it the most.
Sometimes the cards we're dealt in life
don't always play out the way we want them.
That's when it's time to shuffle the deck
and for me getting a second chance at
life led me to a place I've always belonged.
My senior year of high school
you know, I was running cross country and
I was able to run for hours before but
it got to a point where I'll run like a mile
you know, and I'd feel this really bad pain
and I couldn't continue.
Once wrestling season started
it was towards the end where I
just couldn't, you know, practice.
The pain in my leg was right under my right knee
and it felt like a really, really bad bruise.
I went to my regular doctor and I
told her that I had this really bad pain in my knee.
That's when I got an X-ray
taken of my leg and Dr. Palomaki
told me that I had a tumor
and that's when it hit me, you know
That's when
my world stopped, and you know, just I took it all in
It was kind of surreal because
you know, that's not stuff you picture
happening in your life, you know, you see
it in movies and you see it happen to
other people. It's not really
real until it happens to you so it
was kind of shocking, you know, a lot to take in.
By the time I found this out I wasn't
living with my mom or dad. I was actually
living with my half-sister that I met a few years back.
I lived with my mom for 13 years.
She just started abusing drugs and you
know my dad was having his problems and
then he got a little trouble with the
law and, you know, that just made it a little
bit harder basically because I didn't have that
family to bounce back on.
After my doctor told me I had a tumor she
recommended that I head down to Valley Children's Hospital
as soon as possible.
Miguel had a rare form of bone cancer
called osteosarcoma, which affects
the long bones of the body like your
legs and your arms and in his case it
was so big that we were unable to remove
the tumor and so we had to give
chemotherapy to shrink the tumor as best
we could, but even after that the
chemotherapy wasn't enough to get rid of
the tumor alone.
After a few scans, a few
MRIs and a few CT scans and they saw
that it wasn't actually shrinking, that's
when they gave me the option of limb
salvage or amputation.
I think the hardest part for him was
that sometimes we can take the tumor out
and do what we call a limb
salvage or limb sparing surgery but for
Miguel he had to have his leg amputated.
If I wouldn't have gone through with the surgery,
with amputation, there was a chance that
there still would have been a few cells left.
At that point the cancer
would have been stronger and
I would have no other choice but to amputate it
so I just wanted to get it over with and
continue with my life.
So after his amputation, you know, a lot had changed.
He didn't really like to ask for help.
He didn't want me to see him that way
but there was really nothing
he could do. I had to help him and
it was really hard, you know, seeing
someone in that much pain and knowing
you can't do anything about it.
The hardest part is basically having to put
on my leg every day, you know.
I gotta put my leg on just to, you know, get a bowl of cereal
walk my dogs
It's hard.
There was, you know, a lot of weight
lifted off my shoulders that I didn't
have cancer anymore but I was still
going to go through the treatment but
you know, I was cancer-free.
He kept asking me, when can I start working on my walking?
When can I start doing the next thing?
And so he was always after the next.
Inside I was really thinking that it
was just another wall that I had to
break through and, you know, just
find the good in the bad.
It took him awhile, he needed to still do
physical therapy and so it was a long road
but it was never a road that he
wasn't ready to tackle.
He didn't just survive his cancer he actually thrived.
I come into the mountains to reconnect
with what's real, what's untouched,
what really matters.
I came up with a bucket list and
something I gotta look forward to, you
know, just crossing things off my list
and climbing Yosemite is just a box checked off.
I'm not even thinking, I'm speechless.
I think for the future we definitely
have big dreams and we
I feel for the most part know who we want to be and
what we want to do and all it is now
it's just, you know, taking the right path
to get there.
What happened to Miguel's leg
doesn't define him.
It's just part of who he is.
The doctors at Valley Children's
gave me a second chance at
life and I owe it to them and to myself to
live every second of my life to the fullest.