A man may have started his life again on the wrong foot, but it literally saved him.
Ibrahim Abdulrauf, 22, was shocked to wake up from surgery and see his foot sewn on backward after being injured during a sports game. The injury alerted doctors to a more dire diagnosis – bone cancer.
Abdulrauf was playing football with his brother in 2015 when he was knocked to the ground by a harsh tackle.
The then 14-year-old felt a little beaten up but went to bed expecting his young body to recover overnight, but that didn’t happen.
“When I got up the next morning I collapsed to the ground,” Abdulrauf remembered.
”I had an electrocuting pain in my leg and I couldn’t put any weight on it at all.”
The aching boy slid down the stairs on his bum and crawled to his mother who took a few moments to be convinced of the severity of his pain.
”She shouted at me because she thought I was making excuses so I could miss school,” he said.
Abdulrauf was taken to the local hospital in Birmingham, England, and was initially diagnosed with a bone infection.
He stayed at the medical center for six weeks where he was given antibiotics to treat the infection and then returned home for three weeks, but didn’t seem to be healing.
“I wasn’t getting any better. My pain was getting worse and I got a big lump on my leg. They thought I had a boil or a cyst,” Abdulrauf said.
Abdulrauf returned to the doctor’s office and was referred to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in Birmingham, where he was eventually diagnosed with bone cancer.
Primary bone cancers are very uncommon, accounting for less than 1% of all cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.
Abdulrauf went on to have chemotherapy for six months before doctors decided to operate and perform a Rotationplasty, a rare surgical operation used to treat bone tumors that occur near the knee.
Without the operation, Ibrahim’s cancer was at risk of spreading.
These procedures are used because the patient retains the use of their foot, which helps them walk in their prosthesis.
“This way I can use my own leg with my own nerves because they reattach them all after putting the leg back on,” he explained.
Having the foot placed backward allows the patient to use their ankle joint to move their leg in the same way as non-amputees would use their knee.
“I couldn’t imagine seeing myself with a backward foot. I was thinking that it was like Frankenstein,” Abdulrauf said.
“After surgery I remember waking up completely naked. I didn’t know if they’d done the surgery or not. I lifted the bedsheet and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I had a leg when I went to sleep and I woke up and my foot was backward.”
After the operation, he went through another five months of chemotherapy treatment.
“I thought I was going to die,” Abdulrauf recounted. “I was imagining myself dead and my parents at my funeral.”
But in the end, the surgery and chemotherapy were successful and Ibrahim started rehabilitation.
He was given daily exercises to complete at home to become accustomed to his prosthesis and underwent years of rehab to finally learn to walk again.
He is now able to play sports, dance and is self-sufficient for the first time in years.
“I can still play badminton. I used to play every weekend. I’m very grateful to have my independence back I can look after myself now,” Abdulrauf said.