Flint rock-climber lost leg to cancer at just seven years old
PONTIAC -- Strength and determination are two of McKayla Hanson's most defining traits, but for all she has achieved as a rock-climber, those attributes were never put to a greater test than they were 15 years ago in a Royal Oak hospital.
It was then when McKayla's doctors presented her with a life-or-death scenario, after cancer ravaged her seven year-old body for the third time.
"They ended up taking out my entire leg, and the doctors predicted...she's not gonna be able to ride a bike, she's not gonna be able to rollerblade, she won't be able to swim," said McKayla. "And if she does walk, she'll be using a walker or a cane. So, hearing that as a little girl is very devastating."
McKayla's right leg was now completely gone, but thankfully, so was the agonizing pain she endured. Nonetheless, the reality of her situation often proved too much to cope with at such a tender age.
"My leg is gone and it's not gonna grow back," she said. "I mean, I used to think when I was seven that, yeah, it was gonna grow back. I used to think every day that it was gonna grow back when I was a younger girl. And I would cry myself to sleep knowing that it was never gonna grow back. But I can't control it, and why be upset over something you can't control?"
That sort of practicality helped McKayla helped make peace with herself, but to be around her peers as she approached adolescence proved another daunting challenge altogether.
"I purposely would break my prosthetic leg so I would not have to wear it," said McKayla. "And I would not go to school, I would cry to go to school, because I just didn't want people to make fun of me."
McKayla would eventually conquer those insecurities, and her outlook on life began to transform. Her missing leg no longer symbolized what she had lost, but instead, what she had gained.
"Yes it is devastating, but it could be so much worse," McKayla reasoned. "I mean, I could have been dead if they did not amputate my leg. It could have just spread so far to where there would have been nothing the doctors could do."
In the second part of our feature, we explain why McKayla receives overwhelming support within her very own household, and how she took her athletic ambitions to the extreme.
