By Lori Rackl, Sun-Times News Group

(May 9, 2007 - Chicago, Illinois)

For a mother who has watched her child bravely fight bone cancer only to face amputation, it would have been easy to accept doctors saying it was the only way. But Leitia Patton battled even harder, finding a way to save her little girl's leg—and hope

Leitia Patton wipes the tears from her eyes as she recalls a painful conversation she had four years ago with her daughter, Domonique.

Patton had to explain to her then 4-year-old child, who was undergoing aggressive chemotherapy for bone cancer, that doctors needed to amputate her leg.

"She already lost her hair, lost her childhood, and now they wanted to take her leg," said Patton, whose story illustrates what an important tool the Internet has become for patients and their families, putting an unprecedented amount of medical information at their fingertips.

The Internet, however, was the last thing on Patton's mind that day as she looked at her bald daughter, trying to prepare her for her upcoming surgery.

"I sat her down and told her that her leg will go bye-bye," Patton said. "She looked at me and asked if it was going to hurt. I didn't know what to say."

Surgeons in Michigan, where the Pattons live, said Domonique's leg had to be removed because of the cancer growing in her left thigh bone. If Domonique were older, they could cut out the tumor and rebuild that part of her leg. But at her young age, with so much growing left to do, Domonique had no choice but amputation—at least according to her doctors.

Even though the operation was a couple days away, Patton wasn't ready to give up. She put Domonique to bed and turned on the computer. She made a last-ditch, desperate effort to search for anyone or anything that might save her child's leg.

Around 2 a.m., she found it.

Patton came across an innovative, expandable "replacement bone" implant that can be lengthened, without multiple surgeries, as a child grows.

Not many orthopaedic oncologists were using the so-called Repiphysis implant, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in late 2002. And no one had put one in a child as young as 4.

Patton's search led her to a Chicago surgeon who had experience with the device: Dr. Steven Gitelis, director of the Rush Center for Limb Preservation in Chicago. Just a couple of days later, the Pattons were making the 2½-hour drive from their Battle Creek, Michigan, home to Rush University Medical Center. It was a trip they'd repeat many times over the next few years, so Gitelis could gradually lengthen the limb-sparing implant he put in Domonique's tiny leg.

The lengthening process takes less than a minute. A doughnut-shaped ring gets placed around the leg, beaming painless electromagnetic rays that cause a springlike coil in the implant to pop up, adding about a centimeter of height. The surrounding skin and nerves can accommodate the gradual growth.

Domonique likely will need three Repiphysis implants over her lifetime. Last month, Gitelis surgically replaced her first implant with a larger one. The second-grader had a bemused look on her face as she sat recently in Gitelis' office, holding the titanium implant that had been in her body just two weeks earlier.

"This was my leg?" she asked, crinkling her nose.

For the time being, Domonique will come back to Rush about every three months to have her new implant lengthened. In her teens, doctors will swap out her current implant for one that should last the rest of her life.

Her mother thinks three surgeries are a small price to pay for keeping her daughter's leg.

"I was told there was nothing out there, that she's too young and your only option is amputation," Patton said. "Just because a doctor tells you something doesn't mean you have to buy it."

Domonique isn't the only young patient to turn to Gitelis after being told amputation was the only option.

"Unfortunately, amputation is still common under the age of 10," said Gitelis, who gets patients referred from across the Midwest for limb-salvaging surgery.

"We were blessed and lucky to walk into the right hands," Patton said. "I had to find those right hands myself, but thank God I did."

Reprinted by permission. Copyright © 2007, Sun-Times News Group

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