One morning in October 2020, Jonathan Lia, then 39 years old, felt a strange pain in his leg while shifting his foot from the accelerator to the brake pedal of his car. Another seven months would pass before he was officially diagnosed with chondrosarcoma, a rarer type of bone tumour that impacts the cartilage.

Now 41 and living with a prosthetic femur and hip bone, Lia wants others to learn from his experience and not let persistent aches and pains fall to the back burner.

Speaking to Times of Malta, Lia said that a personal reticence to go to the doctor’s clinic and being reassured by advice given to him over telemedicine saw him waiting more than seven months before speaking to a consultant about his persistent pain.

“It started as small moments, it would hurt to shift my leg from pedal to pedal while driving or I would feel an ache in my thigh when putting weight on my leg to climb the stairs,” Lia said.

“When I called a GP for an opinion, they told me it could be arthritis or sciatica. But by the time May rolled around and I realised the pain wasn’t improving as we were seeing warmer weather, something clicked that made me think it was more serious than I was treating it.”

From then on, things moved very quickly. Lia made an appointment at a private hospital where a consultant told him they would conduct an X-ray, through which the doctor noticed a fracture and recommended Lia go to Mater Dei Hospital to get an MRI. He was still in the car driving home from the doctor’s office when he got the call from Mater Dei asking him to go the next day. It was shortly after this that Lia received a diagnosis and was told he was a good candidate for surgery in the UK.

“When I got the letter from the oncology department it was there, black on white: I had cancer. At that moment all I could see before me was death,” Lia said.

“But my consultant was very reassuring and told me that I didn’t have anything that wasn’t repairable.”

Waited more than seven months before speaking to a consultant

After being advised to keep weight off of his leg, for fear that the impacted femur would deteriorate under repeat strain, Lia had to learn to walk with a frame but ended up spending most of that year confined indoors.

He received radiotherapy in the interim and things were starting to look up until an unrelated issue saw him having to be hospitalised and undergo surgery and spend two months away from his partner and their four-year-old daughter.

“That year, I spent Christmas and New Year in the hospital and I lost out on a lot of time with my daughter,” Lia said.

“We’re very attached to each other and it was hard on us both. To spend so much time away from her, especially at that age, you lose out on her milestones.”

Lia had to wait another six months until he had recovered from his first surgery before finally getting the procedure to treat cancer in his femur.

Now, coming up on a year living cancer free, he wants people to not be as dismissive about their pain.

“Waiting so long was kind of a big risk, my cancer could have spread but I was lucky,” Lia said.

“I want people to pay more attention to their bodies and if they’re feeling pain not just brush it off. Pain in the bones is somewhat common and it had never crossed my mind that the situation was so serious.”

Now having to use crutches permanently, Lia says that keeping a positive attitude about things is also a key part of approaching treatment and recovery.

“Once you get a diagnosis, it’s actually kind of a relief because you finally have an answer to what has been bothering you,” he said.

“I tried to remain calm and surround myself with positive energy because if you stress yourself out, it’s only going to make things worse. You have to accept it and keep on living.”