Myles Grimmett had a bone transplanted from his leg into his arm when he was 5 years old in a groundbreaking surgery that saved him from amputation
- Myles Grimmett was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer in his right arm in 2016
- To avoid amputating the preschooler’s dominant arm, Myles, 5, had a “redundant” bone from his left leg transplanted into his arm during an 18-hour surgery
- Now 14, he’s a star basketball player and has stunned doctors with his recovery
Not long ago, the only treatment for bone cancer was amputation. But thanks to “creative” surgery at the Cleveland Clinic, a boy who was diagnosed with bone cancer not only retained movement of his arm — he’s now a star basketball player at his school.
Myles Grimmett had just turned 5 when he came home from daycare in 2016, saying his shoulder was sore.
“He had a little bump, but he said that he had run into the wall,” Brittney Atkinson, tells PEOPLE. Mom to Myles, now 14, and Rondell Jr., now 17, she was used to bumps and bruises from her active sons. But when the bump got a little bigger the next day, Myles’ father, Rondell Sr., suggested taking him to the pediatrician.
The pediatrician “didn’t think nothing of it,” Brittney tells PEOPLE, adding that she sent Myles for an X-ray in the same building “just to be safe.” But “we didn’t even get halfway home and she called me and said, ‘You need to go home and pack a bag and come back,’ “ she tells PEOPLE. At that point, “my heart was in my feet.”
The Elyria, Ohio, mom says the pediatrician took them to a back room and said, “ ‘I don’t want you guys to panic, but this is severe. We need to get you guys out to Cleveland Clinic right now. The bump in his shoulder is cancerous. I don’t know to what extent, but you need to get out there right now.’ ”
Brittney said they rushed out to Cleveland Clinic, where they were taken promptly to a room on the cancer floor. The diagnosis: osteosarcoma — a type of bone cancer — stage 3.
Cleveland Clinic orthopedic surgeon and Section Head of Orthopedic Oncology, Dr. Nathan Mesko, who treated Myles, tells PEOPLE it’s a rare cancer. He remembers meeting him, a “5-year-old kid who thought he was getting bigger muscles” when the swelling was, in fact, a rapidly growing tumor.
Treatment for this type of cancer was previously amputation. But in January 2016, Dr. Mesko says, they had a different option, a “really creative” option.
As he remembers telling Myles’ family, “I really think we can pull this off. This is the best chance of giving Myles an arm and making him cancer-free.”
He would undergo chemotherapy to shrink the tumor enough for surgery, then Dr. Mesko would transplant “a redundant bone,” the fibula, from Myles’s left leg and use it to replace the cancerous one in his arm.
“They seemed very confident that they would at least get him an arm with a functioning hand,” Brittney tells PEOPLE of the 18-hour surgery.
And that had been the plan: to get Myles to a place where he could at least still write and have some use of his arm. Three months after surgery, the transplant was tested when Myles injured himself wrestling with a cousin at a family picnic.
“I was running full speed at my cousin and then when I bounced back, I just flew,” Myles tells PEOPLE. But the break healed as if it were the original bone.
These days, he’s a star basketball player on his school team — having taught himself how to shoot with his left hand instead of his right.
As Dr. Mesko said, “I, never in a million years, thought he was going to be able to fully move his hand above his head, shoot a basketball, reach into his back pocket, have an arm that is growing at the same clip as his other side.”
“All of those things are kind of like gilding the lily, so to speak. That just blew me away,” he continued, saying Myles’ recovery “shows the power and the resiliency of children. They just have this plasticity, this ability to like adapt and evolve. Never sell a child short because they will amaze you every time.”
These days, “I don’t really think about it,” Myles tells PEOPLE. “I just feel like it didn’t happen for real. My body functions normally.”
Even his mom says sometimes she forgets why he’s “heavy-footed” as he walks through their house, because of the surgery on his left leg. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘Myles, why are you stomping so hard?’ and then I have to stop and think about it. His left foot is heavier because part of it is numb from them doing the surgery.”
Next up for the teen is more basketball — he’s playing on the school travel team and says he wants to continue playing all through high school.
“It just makes me feel blessed that they were able to help me,” he said. “‘Cause I wouldn’t know what to do if I did lose my arm. I’m just glad that they did help me, so I am where I am right now.”
As Dr. Mesko said, “That’s the exciting part about this: To see somebody who has taken the bull by the horns and just sprinted ahead.” At the time of the surgery, “I would have said, ‘I’d be happy that you have an arm in five years and that you’re cancer-free.’ ”
“He’s taking it a whole lot further than that.”
