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Step by Step Bone cancer was just the beginning for survivor Jacob Farley / by Emily Price
// photograph by Paul Mehaffey
G
etting rid of bone cancer at age 23 was only the point of departure on a twoyear journey for Jacob Farley. He walked slowly, painfully; sometimes five steps a day, sometimes none at all. At times, he hobbled on crutches; at times, he was shackled to his parents’ couch, unable to move. Along the way, Farley encountered seven or eight surgeries—he doesn’t remember exactly. There was the removal of seven inches of his left tibia, which took care of the initial tumor. But then there was the hole in his shin that never healed. There were the bone scrubs, and the rearrangement of his calf muscle to the front of his leg, paired with skin grafts from his thigh. And after every procedure, he undertook the arduous process of learning how to walk again. Full Speed Ahead: Farley had been studying exercise science when Jacob Farley was diagnosed with he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma the day after osteosarcoma the Christmas of 2012. He continued his studies through day after Christmas the removal of the tumor, but it eventually proved too of 2012, and had his difficult to read and write in the haze of medications. left leg amputated in “All these surgeries were just to get rid of February 2014. Today, infections,” he says. “It didn’t even have anything he is a physical trainer at GHS’s LIFE to do with cancer at this point. There were some Center and works really dark moments. I remember one day, I was with other amputees lying on the couch, and my family was watching a and cancer survivors. baseball game. I just turned my head and faced my couch. I didn’t want to talk anymore. I didn’t want to do anything.” He made his way to the kitchen and sat alone, staring into nothing. He’d reached his breaking point. But then he began reading a journal his mom had kept over the past year: “I thought to myself, ‘Look at everything that’s already passed. I don’t know when, or what it’s going to look like, but it will all be over.’ There was always a light at the end of the tunnel.” February 2014 brought the relief of amputation. A month later, Farley was back in the gym, his crutches always nearby as he taught himself how to navigate
50 TOWN / towncarolina.com