Danielle King has faced three major cancer operations in nine years, but it is not her own future she thinks about most when another scan brings bad news. It is her five-year-old daughter’s.
Danielle was diagnosed with the rare bone cancer, chondrosarcoma, in 2017, but says she is willing to lose a leg so she can see her little girl grow up.
The first signs that Danielle, 41, from Basildon, Essex, was unwell was pain in her right leg that lasted for more than a year. She said: ‘I thought it was a pulled muscle. Over about 18 months, my thigh had become hard and swollen and had doubled in size.’
She had visited a GP in 2017 on an unrelated matter and mentioned her sore leg. After looking at her swollen thigh, Danielle could see the shock on the doctor’s face. He told her she had sarcoma and referred her for a scan.
It was booked for a fortnight later but, when the swelling got worse – three days after the doctor’s appointment – she went to A&E.
After an X-ray, bone and CT scan, Danielle was told that she had a chondrosarcoma, a rare type of cancer. Shockingly, the tumour was about the size of a rugby ball.
Remarkably, her dog, Dave, had for months kept pawing at that part of her leg and was aggressive if anyone came near Danielle. She thinks he may have sensed she had a tumour.
She had a ten-hour operation to remove the growth in August 2017 at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital at Stanmore.
Recovery was tough – Danielle needed physiotherapy to improve her mobility and moved into a ground floor flat.
Some time later, her hip started to ache. She was diagnosed with cancer again in December 2018 after an MRI scan found two new tumours.
She had another operation at the start of 2019. She subsequently learned the tumour had split during the first operation and some of the cells had been left in her leg.
Then followed a period in which Danielle was clear of cancer and she gave birth to daughter Sophie.
Danielle had marked five years clear of cancer in May 2024 when she discovered a lump in her leg. It turned out she had a 5cm tumour. That was removed during a six-hour operation at the end of 2024.
Recently, she has been told there is an ‘area of suspicion’ in her leg that will be investigated. She said: ‘I’ve had three major operations in nine years. I can’t ever relax. I’m always one scan away from things changing again.’
Financially, life has been a struggle over the last few years. Danielle had worked as a corporate events manager for a major bank but left to take a career break when she fell ill. ‘If I had stayed in my job, I would have been fine financially. That was tough.’
She is not working now and, at first, was told she couldn’t have benefits because she was ‘too positive’ about her situation.
Sophie, now aged five, has given her an extra sense of purpose. Her daughter has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, so is subject to falls. ‘Sophie is petrified of me having surgery. I can’t play with her on floor because I can’t get up.’
She added: ‘I want to see Sophie grow up. I’m willing to lose a leg to see that.’
Emily Williams, Research Manager at Sarcoma UK, said: ‘The repeated recurrences Danielle describes are exactly why research into chondrosarcoma is so urgent. Unlike many cancers, chondrosarcoma doesn’t respond reliably to standard treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy, which can leave surgery as the main option and patients facing operations for years after their diagnosis.
‘Sarcoma UK has funded research at the University of Liverpool, led by Dr Mandy Peffers, into the biology that drives chondrosarcoma to develop. The research produced new findings that could point towards future treatments and ways to detect the disease earlier, and these have been shared with researchers across the field to build on. This work is helping us understand what drives chondrosarcoma at the most basic level, and that understanding is what we hope will eventually give us new ways to treat it.’
