“Can you believe I’m actually going to ring the bell?” Kayde asked his mother a few days before the event. The long journey 16-year-old Kayde endured with cancer, surgery and treatment had finished and it seemed a long time ago that a relatively minor wrist injury turned into a diagnosis of much more. Ringing the bell in the Oncology clinic in November to celebrate the end of his treatment was an acheivement. 

Almost twelve months ago Kayde injured his wrist playing football with his older brother, Blake, and it was so sore his mother, Julie Richards, rushed him to the hospital. The growth plate in his wrist was fractured and he wore a cast for six weeks to let it heal. Just before the cast was due to be removed, however, he had an X-ray from the elbow down that caused concern. When his doctor showed Julie, it looked like the bone was cracked and joining up wrong. A series of scans revealed a tumour which stunned his family as he was an energetic and sporty teenager who had not shown any symptoms.

Julie remembers, “He wasn’t unwell and was just feeling normal. There was nothing at all. He was still playing soccer as a goalkeeper.”

An ongoing process began of test after test that revealed Kayde had Ewing Sarcoma, which is a rare type of bone or soft tissue cancer, after which he was transferred to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead because it was close to his home. He had chemotherapy, then surgery, and more chemotherapy afterwards to make sure it didn’t return.

Then, Kayde was given the ‘all-clear’.

“I looked at him and thought, oh my god, I don’t believe that. It’s only been a year, but it was a very long year,” said Julie.

Some months ago, when he was halfway through treatment, Kayde had said, “When I ring the bell, mum, can I have my friends there that have stuck by me?”

He was referring to seven close friends, from his high school, who kept in contact all the way through the treatment. Two teachers from his school, who had coached him in soccer, also attended as well as his close family. His brother, Blake, and sister, Kayla, were “over the moon”.

“They have always been very close," said Julie. "And these twelve months have been really hard for both of them.”

Kayde has his eyes set firmly on the future. He is back at school, playing soccer again, has a new part-time job and just earned his learner licence to drive a car. He looks so healthy that his friends sometimes forget he was sick but his left hand, which can still be sore at present, is a small reminder. Julie observed, “He’s not wasting any time being a typical teenager again.”

Find out more about Ewing Sarcoma.