Mercy Cancer Services
Patient Stories - Ashley Link
It was Ashley Link’s fourth grade year in Seiling, Oklahoma, when her
knee began to bother her.
“We thought she was having some growing spurts,” says Delena Link,
Ashley’s mother.
For the then-9-year-old, now 13, who loved to play basketball, run as
fast as she could and who would live outdoors if at all possible, her
swelling knee was slowing her down.
But what began as just a niggling pain turned out to be osteosarcoma,
a bone cancer that would require many months of chemo and a surgery
replacing her knee and six inches of her leg bone. Now with a prosthetic
porcelain knee and titanium rods, Ashley walks again.
With NASA-type technology, Mercy’s Kimberly Smith, M.D., expands the
rods as Ashley grows. Every six months or so, without cutting into
Ashley’s leg, Dr. Smith uses an electromagnet that instantly liquefies
the titanium rods in her leg, allowing her to stretch them as needed.
“As soon as they turn off the electromagnet, the rods harden again,”
says Delena.
Without such technology, kiddos with cancer would have to wait until
they stopped growing to get a prosthetic limb.
"This really is space-age technology", says Dr.
Smith. "This has revolutionized limb salvage options in skeletally
immature kids. Before we had to either amputate or perform multiple
surgeries to expand the prosthesis.
For Ashley, who walks with a little bit of a limp,
when her bones stop growing, she will eventually undergo surgery and
receive an adult prosthesis. “With adult devices, she’ll have full mobility and
she will no longer walk with a limp,” says Delena.
And while Ashley’s cancer slowed her down for a
while, she continues to live life at full speed, alongside her
14-year-old brother Gehrig and 9-year-old sister Brienna. “I can’t do as many sports as I used to. But I love
to play the piano and sing. And shop,” she adds with a giggle.
If family, friends and classmates had to choose one
word to describe Ashley, it would be brave. And second to brave, she has
a heart for other kids facing similar battles. “I tell them what I went through, what they might
expect and that they need to be brave,” says Ashley. “And I tell them
about Dr. Smith. She’s a great doctor. She always explains everything to
me calmly and I don’t get so worried. I can ask her what’s going to
happen, and she always tells me.”
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