Stories of progress, inspiration, and information in overcoming osteosarcoma.

Jill stands next to a boulder and proudly shows off her prosthetic leg.

Tragedy and Triumph

Jill MacDonald was diagnosed with osteosarcoma within two weeks of her husband learning he had stage 4 colon cancer.

Jill MacDonald has defied the odds in many ways — for better and worse. At 42 she developed osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that most commonly affects children and young adults. Her osteosarcoma diagnosis came within two weeks of her husband learning he had stage 4 colon cancer.

“I do not even remember which of us was officially diagnosed first,” she says. “It was all just so shocking, and I was numb from it.”

Dual Diagnoses

Living in Nova Scotia, Canada, Jill and her husband Jeff had school-aged kids at the time: 11, 9, and 6. Before her cancer diagnosis, Jill was an active mom and part-time grade 1 teacher. She loved her life.

“The kids were just starting to get to the age where they were becoming independent. We were able to start traveling with them,” Jill recalls. “I had recently finished my master’s degree and was getting ready to go back to work full-time. We had paid off our student loans and were ready to really start living. Life was so good.”

It was the busyness of their lives that made it easy for Jill to ignore the pain in her knee.

“I was running for exercise with a group of neighborhood moms and started to get a pain in my left knee when I first started running. But I was 42 and just chalked it up to getting older,” she says. “Then I started to have pain at night when I was sleeping. It was a nagging, aching pain, much worse at night; I could not sleep. I brushed it off. We were going on a trip to Florida, and I did not want to ruin it, so I put off going to the doctor.”

After the family returned, Jill went to a walk-in clinic, where a doctor brushed off her pain.

“She checked my knee and said, ‘There is nothing wrong with you. You just need to wear better shoes,’” Jill recalls.

Finally, Jill saw her regular physician, who ordered an X-ray that showed a tumor. After a biopsy, she received an official diagnosis: high-grade fibroblastic osteosarcoma. Later, she learned there were spots on her lungs too.

Trudging Through Treatment Together

While Jill never received a prognosis, Jeff had, and it was devastating.

“Jeff’s cancer had spread to the lining of his colon, his lymph nodes, and his liver, and there were small spots in his lungs,” Jill says. “His doctor told us it was incurable, that treatment would be palliative, and he had a maximum of two years to live.”

The couple did not have the time or space to process any of it.

“It was devastating. But we had three kids, and we had to stay strong for them,” Jill says. “You just find a way to keep it together. I do not know how we did it.”

The MacDonald family

With incredible support from Jill’s sisters, mother, family, and friends, the couple started their respective treatment plans.

“We were both in chemotherapy at the same time,” Jill says. “We moved all three of our kids’ bedrooms downstairs, and Jeff and I stayed upstairs with the bathroom that was off-limits to the kids. My sisters each took a six-month shift living with us and taking care of the kids. It was really hard.”

Jill’s treatment followed standard osteosarcoma protocol: three rounds of chemotherapy, limb-salvage surgery and then more chemotherapy. But when the chemotherapy failed to shrink the spots on her lungs, her doctor recommended second-round therapy. Jill’s body could only tolerate three treatments.

“My platelets were so low that I was at risk of bleeding out internally. They basically told me that if I did not stop chemo, it was going to kill me,” she says. “So that was the end of my treatment options in Nova Scotia.”

After her last CT scan, Jill remembers her oncologist counting the tumors in her lungs.

“He said, ‘Jill, there are so many. I stopped counting at 14.’”

But Jill refused to give up.

“It just was not an option,” she says. “I needed to be around for my kids.”

Fortunately, Jill’s aunt had already begun researching clinical trials.

Picking the Winning Trial

Jill was given the option of participating in one of three osteosarcoma clinical trials. She picked the one testing the immunotherapy drug Keytruda merely based on location.

“Being Canadian, I figured doing a trial in Michigan would be best for me,” she says. “That way, if I needed medical care, it would be relatively easy to get over the border back to Canada.”

After three rounds of treatment, Jill went in for a biopsy. Staff left her waiting longer than usual in the CT room.

“‘I am sorry to keep you waiting,’ the doctor said to me. ‘But we cannot find any tumors in your lungs that are large enough to biopsy,’” Jill recalls.

It turns out she had beaten the odds, big time.

“The trial had about 80 people, and only two of us responded to the drug,” she says. “I could not believe it. It was a miracle.”

Loss and More Loss

Unfortunately, Jill was not afforded much time to celebrate. During her trial, Jeff passed away from his cancer, and doctors found a new tumor in the soft tissue of Jill’s left knee.

“They suspected that the cancer cells were so tiny that some of the seeds dropped during the surgery and got implanted in the soft tissue,” she says. “So, I had quite a big tumor growing in my leg’s soft tissue. Before Jeff died, I met with specialists and the orthopedic surgeon, and we all decided that the best thing for me to do, given my success with the clinical trial, was to amputate my leg to get rid of everything.”

“I am so grateful for life that, honestly, there is nothing that I cannot achieve.” — Jill MacDonald

Life Today

Because it was working on her lung tumors, Jill appealed to Merck, the company that makes Keytruda, pleading to remain on the drug even after the trial ended.

“I was not leaving my kids, and so I was not going to stop taking that drug,” she says.

After many calls and letters, the company obliged. Jill went on to have 136 doses of the drug over nine years. She had her last infusion in March 2023. So far, there have been no signs of recurrence.

At long last, life is good again.

“I am so grateful for life that, honestly, there is nothing that I cannot achieve,” she says. “I love my prosthetic. There are things I cannot do anymore, but that is okay because it has opened up a whole new world of passions and things I can do.”

One such passion is golfing.

“I was driving my kids around the golf course one day, and my daughter said, ‘Mom, why don’t you golf with us?’ I said, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t golf!’” Jill says. “Then, I was lying in bed that night and thought, ‘Wait, why can’t I golf?’”

Jill contacted an organization called Parasport Nova Scotia, and they set her up with a golf coach.

“I took golf lessons for two years and became completely addicted,” she says. “Now I am the vice president of Golf Nova Scotia and the chair of the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility Committee.”

After all that Jill and her children have been through, they are doing remarkably well.

“My kids have all had therapy, and they are all doing really well,” she says. “They are definitely more resilient than a lot of kids. They know they can get through hard things. I would not wish this on anyone else’s kids, but they are okay. We are in a really good place now. It is truly amazing.”