Payton Pekarek

2024 Courage Ride Patient Honoree

My name is Payton Pekarek, and I am an Osteosarcoma Survivor.

In the fall of 2020, I began to feel a subtle, aching pain in my left knee. I was a freshman playing rugby at Iowa State University at the time and thought that I was just sore from practice. The pain was very dull, and it was only occurring at night, which at the time I thought was odd but never raised any questions because I was sure it would go away eventually. As the weeks went by, the pain would get more intense. So intense that I was not sleeping at night and was limping everywhere I went. I now knew that something was wrong, and I needed to see a doctor. When I went home for winter break, I saw a local doctor and was sent to physical therapy because my knee was not noticeably swollen. I did about four weeks of PT before heading back to Ames for the spring semester.

As the spring semester carried on, the pain was now occurring day and night and I was in tears almost every day. No amount of Tylenol or ice was helping, and I decided I needed a second opinion. I went to my primary care provider, and she ordered an X-ray, but the results were clear, no fracture or anything unusual. She knew that this pain had been occurring for months and physical therapy did not help so she sent me for an MRI. I was told after my MRI that I would get a call about my results in about a week. I got a call two days later that I needed to come in for a CT scan immediately because there was a mass in my femur. The CT scan ruled out the possibility that it was a cyst, and I was immediately referred to the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics (UIHC).

I had my first knee surgery in the summer of 2021, where the pathology results showed a benign tumor called Osteoblastoma. I recovered and headed back to school, this time at the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). Not even three months later, I began to feel the same distinct pain in my femur again. I was sent for another MRI, which showed that my tumor had returned.

On March 22nd, 2022, I had my second knee surgery to remove the tumor, which I was hoping was my last surgery. I was wrong because on March 30th, I received a call from Dr. Miller, who said that the pathology was showing high-grade osteosarcoma and that I needed to come to Iowa City the next day to go over my treatment plan and meet my new care team. The next day I met with Dr. Miller and Dr. Monga, and we discussed what was going to be my new reality.

The next week, on April 6th, I got my port placed and immediately began my first round of chemotherapy. I was scared, nervous, and didn’t know what to think. How could all of this happen to me? I am 19, healthy, young, active, and in school. This stuff doesn’t happen to people like me, I thought. Well, sure enough, I soon realized that it did happen to people like me, and it was happening to me right now, in the most hectic time of my life. 

I was in the middle of the spring semester of my sophomore year at UNI when all of this happened. I made the very tough decision to continue school and finish out the semester. That decision was a tough one but a necessary one. I was lucky enough to have professors who understood and were willing to help make the rest of the semester as easy as possible for me. I was able to finish the semester while also undergoing inpatient chemotherapy almost every week! Unfortunately, I had to take the fall semester off due to treatments. I completed my last chemotherapy treatment on November 12th, 2022, and returned to in-person classes full-time in the spring of 2023!

I will graduate from UNI with my bachelor's degree on May 11th, 2024, which is a day I never thought I would see after being diagnosed with cancer. I will be pursuing a higher education at the University of Iowa starting this fall, where I will be a graduate student in Child Life. I am so grateful to have had the best possible care team at the UIHC and am excited for what the future holds!

One of the biggest things I learned from my cancer journey is to always be positive and keep that smile. It’s so hard to have optimism while having cancer, but I learned that there is always someone who is experiencing a worse day than you, so keep your head up and take it one treatment at a time. The road may be long, and the journey may be tough, but there is light at the end of the tunnel!